Good morning, new year…

[thank you for the personal letters inquiring as to my lack of blogging… i love you and will keep writing, still]

I’m sitting in my husband’s office… it’s early and the sun is shining.  I love this time of year – the sun shines at an angle such that it comes streaming in the south/east windows and casts an apricot/pink glow.  I love that the days are growing longer a minute or so a day.  I love that a whole new year looms large before us.  I love that there’s hope and promise and potential.  Potentiality… that’s what I love and that’s what I think I’ve forgotten for a few months now.  Potentiality. A great big bunch of potentiality.

I haven’t felt like blogging.  O, I mean, I have felt like blogging — I feel like it every day — but I haven’t felt like editing my thoughts or editing what goes into print here.  That takes a different kind of thought — a different kind of energy.   Every now and then I feel like just writing.  And every now and then the thought hits me that I would like to write without walls.  I’d like to talk plainly about so many things.  But then I think it might seem that I am referring to some incident shared in confidence or that I am being too critical about things or whatever.  Sometimes I’ll be in the midst of an event and I just want to write about it… from my perspective… not to say something to the others involved, but simply making observation. Amazingly, many times I will be in the midst of this or that event or activity and I’ll read a similar account in the paper or a magazine or book or whatever and I’ll consider writing about it — or at least commenting on it and then I stop.  I stop bcz the similarity to my ‘real life’ situation is so parallel – and I consider what might be thought… Ack… so I don’t write about it — well, at least not here.  At least not at the time.  I write things in my head all day long.  I think of things I wish I could say all day long.

I wish we weren’t all so quick to misjudge what we read or hear.  We’re quick to jump to conclusions about things that are said…. assuming others have ulterior motives for teaching or saying whatever it is they’re saying.  When, in reality, most often people are just making observations; they’re just communicating their thoughts, ideas or experiences.  And bcz – though we don’t like to think so,  we’re all pretty much the same, stories are often going to have a familiar ring to them… different women’s life experiences are going to be pretty similar.   Different but similar.  Seasons are seasons — each have similar characteristics.

We all have stories.  We all have lives that should be journaled.  Some public, some private. We all want to be recognized.  To some degree.  We all want to be loved, appreciated, cherished, validated, needed.  By someone. Some, by lots of someone’s.  And we all have something to say.  Some of us want to say more in a more public manner than others do.  Ironically, sometimes the more we want to be heard, the less we say.

I’ve been thinking about all this a lot lately… and, as is typical, surprise! I’ve been feeling like a: zero.  But last night… I was wiping dust from underneath a tall cabinet.  I was lying down on the floor to reach under the cabinet, and from there, the height and size the cabinet was significant.  I was thinking: my life is just a ‘zero.’  And I was thinking (almost in protest, but probably in an attempt at self preservation):  …but a ‘zero’ holds a place.  A ‘zero’ next to another ‘zero’ has place.  And even if there’s just a measly ‘one’ next to the ‘zero’ — the ‘zero’ has great significance. I was envisioning a zero next to… say… a 1 and 5 zeros.

I’ve been thinking about when I was 5.  And all the years between then and now.  I sometimes feel like I’m 5 still.  I’ll write later about adding a ‘zero’  to. that. 5.  For the next 81 days I’ll be thinking about that a lot.

more later.  Happy new year.