Another "aha!" moment

A new friend stopped in last night on her way to her get-away home here in Michigan. It was a lovely spring evening - warm enough to sit on the deck for a while - and we chatted about this and that as the work week came to a close and the sun went down.

One of the topics touched on was my interest in a small house in my friend's town. I'd looked at it months back because I was itchy again to move to what was more in line with the "there" I was looking for nearly seven years ago when I left the Chicago area. A place where I would fit, feel at home and bloom. But decided not to risk trying to sell my current loft in a down market. Prudent, I told myself. About six weeks ago I heard it had been offered for short sale. Too bad, I thought, the owners must really be in trouble. Maybe I could afford it now, but no, can't own two homes. Not prudent. Then just last weekend, I was driving by the house and saw something posted on the front door. I pulled in the driveway and walked up to the door. A foreclosure notice; the home was now a HUD property. Wow, I thought, that's really too bad. Those owners must be in a world of hurt. And again the little voice said, I'll bet this place is really cheap now! But no, not prudent. Owning two homes is crazy when you are consciously choosing a very limited income way to live. Crazy, stop thinking about it.

Back to the conversation...my friend said she  hoped she didn't offend me and that while she loved my current home (this was her first visit), she really saw me in the other house. Said it suited me; that she saw me there. I quickly countered that while it was a lovely home and certainly the land had been a dream I'd held, that when I saw myself there I saw myself as 30 years old, but that sadly I'm not going to turn 30 my next birthday, but something that is a  multiple of it. That a house requires much more work than a condo. And while these words were coming out of my mouth, I realized that what I was really saying had nothing to do with money directly. It had everything to do with a way of thinking that was limiting me. A way of thinking that limited my parents and kept them from doing things they wanted to when they could have. Not wildly reckless things, but things that would have made them smile and given them memories. Like my father taking a job in Chicago when his company wanted to transfer him (he ended up in the same job, hating it his entire career) or the family taking vacations (we took one vacation while I was a child and I  know my mother had traveled a great deal before she married my father.) Of course, my parents smiled and had memories, but you know what I mean....I'm talking about their foregoing what someone recently called "re-liveable moments". And here I was, thinking I was being financially prudent when I was avoiding something that might be just such a reliveable moment. How smart was that? How often had I misunderstood my own intentions and limited myself unnecessarily?

I'm once again reminded that blooming where you are planted is not only about a place. You can be planted in a mindset too. And like any garden, a mindset needs tending too. I need to do a bit more weeding, to clear out misperceptions that are holding me back. And I need to enrich my mind garden with some ideas or dreams. Rather than focus unnecessarily on limits and what isn't possible, as my friend said describing her own life, my "aha" was that I need to "figure it out" as I go; not live tomorrow today or get stuck in yesterday. Yes, I am getting older, but I'm not "older" yet. Blooming where I'm planted means I need to correct mistakes, celebrate successes and smile and remember how I did both...

Why write?

Sometimes I wonder why I feel the need to write. What drives writers - wanna be and big time - to write? It's been said that writing is a yoga - a practice. And that true writers, ones in practice rather than in name, write. That is what they do, whether or not anyone reads what they write, if they even write for public consumption. It is like breathing; if you don't do it you really miss it after a while...


I love words and ideas. Maybe that's why I write....at least why I write some of the time. And I've been collecting words for nearly two decades. Capturing quotes and keeping them hidden away for my own enjoyment, pulling them out to add to them or pick a favorite to use in something I'm working on. I always intended to "do something" with the entire list someday. The idea of a book flitted around the back of my mind, but that was so expected, done so many times. What could I add? And that was important, I needed to add something to demonstrate my worth, my skill, my - what? Presence, perhaps? 


Anyway, I had let several months of quotes pile up without adding them to my collection. So I dug in today to get caught up. The process itself a practice, a meditation. I would see that I had accomplished something. In the middle of doing this, I came across a quote that I had to share here...


"You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke." 
-Arthur Plotnik, editor and author (b. 1937)


Yep, that's true. I write - often struggle to write - to get what's inside of me out. Then I throw it away because it's not worthy of seeing the light of day. But every time I push the "publish post" button, I can feel the fire burning off the smoke just a bit more.