Life is a Journey

Today's blog is actually about my blog.  Just over a year ago I started down a new path - being a writer.  Don't get me wrong, I had always been a writer at heart, for as long as I can remember.  But never before had I chosen writing as a career.  It has been a wonderful and enlightening year.

Part of that journey has been this blog.  I first started it for two reasons.  Reason #1 is that it's just something you do these days to get your name out there and promote what you do.  Reason #2 is that the act of writing something, this blog, got my fingers moving and my thoughts flowing.  By the time I was done blogging I was ready to start writing on my book.  While I have written much over the course of my life, I had never written all the time, consistently from day to day.  There had never been a need before.

So, now a year later I need to stop and examine my reasoning.  Reason #1 is still valid today, but Reason #2 is no longer necessary.  When I sit down to write, I am usually ready to hit the ground running, as they say.  Given that understanding, I have cut back to blogging once a week.

But I also reevaluated Reason #1.  I was recently reading about blogging for writers.  The point was made that you need your blogs to have a point.  Initially the point of my blog was to catalog my writing journey, but I believe now that my point is actually much broader than that.

I am turning 50 in a few weeks, and despite that, I started a new career for myself just one year ago.  I have learned so much about writing and life in general this past year.  Isn't that what life is all about?  It's about what we learn along the pathway of our experiences.  I'm not going to change the name of my blog, because it is about "my crazy writing adventure."  But it's really about all of the crazy adventures we pursue in this life.

Life is a journey.  What are you learning along the way?  What am I learning?  How does that shape what we do and who we are?  These are questions for everyone, not just writers.  I may take the things I learn or observe and use them in my writing, but someone else could take those same learning moments and apply them to their parenting or teaching or artwork.  Maybe by observing the patterns in nature a computer scientist will see how to organize his or her latest program.   (Fibonacci numbers, named for the mathematician who wrote about them, mimic patterns in nature.  I use them when I make quilts, to make them more pleasing to the eye.)

So, from here on out, think about your journey and I'll think about mine.  Then as I blog about those thoughts maybe they'll echo familiar to you, and we'll see that we're all really on the same great amusement ride where our vehicle is the earth and the ride is titled life.