Hello? Anyone out there? I know it’s been a while since we’ve talked. I’ll totally understand if what I have to say floats out there like a balloon freed from the wrist of a toddler. It floats freely, lazily, disappearing eventually. None notice and none remember.
I’m okay with that.
After all, since my very long digital silence, I’ve come to one conclusion: I must write for me and only for me. Anything else is pandering to a crowd that likely doesn’t exist.
I’m okay with that.
There’s part of me that wants to call out in a high pitched, annoying, nasally voice, “I’m baaaaack!”, but how cliché is that? Instead, I just say I feel like doing it, instead of really doing it. If you are a detail person, you’ve noticed that the last post before this one was dated April 6. If you’re a relational person and you liked The Wild Mind, then you noticed I haven’t been writing and you missed me.
I Took A Little Break from Blogging
Well, not so little. It was a big enough break to get me kicked off some of those rating sites and blog lists since I didn’t post anything in over 30 days. It was a big enough break for me to finish up the onslaught of work projects, demands and deadlines I had going during the first half of this year. It was a big enough break to give me time to rethink things. A lot of things. Continue reading
I do not feel like this today.
I do not feel like this today.
I do not feel like this today.
I feel more like this. 
The reason is because when I tried to do this:
I ended up with a wonderful (to me) post about my upcoming high school graduation. And then somewhere between writing it, proofing it, reworking it and looking for pictures for it (who would think finding pictures of my small home town back in the 80’s would be so tough?) I decided against posting it. I had second thoughts. Something inside me said wait a day or two. Something else inside of me shrieked, “But I need a post today!”
Now, I am out of this:
And I have so many of these:
My writing time expired long ago and my day is mostly gone. My butt hurts and as any good writer knows, no good writing happens with a sore butt. I must give it up for today.
Further, Number 3 still wants to go to the skate park. I still need to work out. Fortunately, I have dinner figured out for tonight. I won’t be getting that load or two of stuff to the Goodwill today, I’m afraid. Did I mention I haven’t showered in a long, long time, like days. I can’t remember…
I’ll just have to try again tomorrow, because I promised Number 3, I’d take him to skate park if the weather is good. The weather is good and a promise is a promise.
Some days are just like this, I guess.
John Gottman, in his wonderful book, “Why Marriages Succeed or Fail…And How You Can Make Yours Last” (1994) discusses the criteria for a stable marriage:
“…it all comes down to a simple mathematical formula:…you must have at least five times as many positive as negative moments together if your marriage is to be stable.”
So, you might ask, what’s a single mom like me doing reading a research-based marriage book?
Yeah, well, about that.
It has nothing to do with wanting to be married or in a relationship, though I do love Gottman’s work and the way he writes about it. I actually stumbled across Gottman’s work through my own research and study on student behavioral success and creating positive learning environments for all children. Creating a positive learning environment is not unlike marriage in some ways. If a relationship is to be perceived as positive or stable, there must be 5 times as many positive interactions as negative ones. This applies to relationships between parents and children or colleagues.
So, you might ask, what’s that got to do with blogging?
Well, yeah, about that.
To be honest, blogging hasn’t always been a positive experience for me. If you are a blogger you know that it feels great when people comment on your posts, when people notice, etc. This creates a community of sorts where people connect, comment, share and exchange pieces of their lives. There is a positive exchange and even if you don’t always get positive comments, hopefully, when things are going well (your blog is getting traffic and the traffic is commenting) you, as the blogger experience at least 5 to 1 positives for every negative.
That’s the positive part of blogging.
If, however, you are not self-employed, or have a flexible schedule like a stay-at-home parent or an entrepreneur, or a job that allows you to blog as part of your daily tasks, or, if like me, you just simply don’t know what the he** (can I say that here?) you are doing, then you might begin to experience some negativity associated with blogging.
If you wish to blog daily, but can’t, tally one negative for the frustration of wanting to write but not having time to do it well.
If you can’t write daily, tally another negative for the disappointment in seeing your blog stats decline. Blogging really is an “if you write it, they will come” endeavor.
If you can’t write daily and your blog stats dwindle, it means you are not getting traffic to your site and you are less likely to get comments or feedback on your blog. Tally another negative or two depending on how much this bothers you.
If you already don’t have enough time to write daily, you likely don’t have the daily time (except maybe on weekends or vacations) to do the required research and study to find out how to get your blog SEO or to drive traffic to your blog, develop your personal brand or simply get over to other blogs you love so you can keep up on what’s happening in their lives, and thereby comment, create and sustain a blog community for yourself. Tally, at least three negatives for that.
The positive? Hopefully you are writing for your own purposes and that is enough. If so, tally more positives for you than negatives. If not, then you’ve just ended up in an unstable blog relationship which might not last if you can’t turn that around for your bloggy self.
Maybe intervention is necessary.
For me, this intervention occurred, in part, when Amber over at Making The Moments Count awarded me the Sunshine Award. I wrote briefly about it in my post titled Awards, Recognition, Reality & Paying It Forward.
That equated to a number of tallies on the positive side of blogging for me. It was not enough to turn around my faltering blogging relationship but it at least kept me from divorcing my blog…at least for now.
You see, I do write for my own purposes, but somewhere along the line things changed and it became more than just about me. It became about what I like to refer to as “The Community”. It is about the friendships. It is about the challenges we all encounter and share in life. It is about the camaraderie, the laughter, the tears, the connections. It became about connecting with the real people behind the print.
The biggest negative for me is that I’ve missed keeping in touch with those other really excellent writers out there who share their stories, their perspectives, their knowledge and their lives through their blogs. I’ve missed what I gain from reading them.
So, you might ask, where am I going with this?
Yeah, well, about that, too. Like a wayward toddler in the toy store this post had a mind of its own. I’m working hard to put it back in the stroller, so to speak, but I’m failing, so I’ll get to the point.
I am going to pay it forward to 10 other bloggers who bring sunshine to my life, but again time constrains me so I’m going to do it in parts. What makes the bloggers I’m recognizing today so sunny for me is that they, like me, are not professional bloggers or writers. They struggle with the time demands of a job (outside writing) that takes up most of their day then they come home to the second shift, often on their own without the benefit of a partner. In fact, they don’t even write daily some of them. That worked in their favor here and that NEVER happens in the blogosphere.
So, here we go with the first three of ten to get the Sunshine Award from me.
Drum roll, please.
The first of these blogs I stumbled across months ago. The author has a graduate degree in Communication, the same area of study I did my undergrad work in. I’m fascinated by his approach to planned change and how he’s implemented the strategies in his own personal life to not only change his life but deliberately plan and improve his entire existence. Give it up for jassnight at The Critical Path. Better yet, go visit him!
The second of these blogs, I stumbled across a while back during my internet excursions. I was encouraged by the perspectives of a dad, who blogs and can cook and lives to tell about it. This must mean his cooking is tolerable; a quality I definitely admire in a man almost as much as I appreciate a man’s ability to communicate thoughtfully. He says he’s not first date material, but I’m thinking he’s got that wrong, after all, he has a day job and it isn’t blogging. Give it up for Travis over at A Culminating Life.
The third daddy blogger, gets the sunshine award for keeping it real and sharing the good, the bad, and the irritating post-divorce single parenting realities. He works in one of the most stressful professions I could imagine in probably one of the most stressful locations in the country. I applaud him for consistently trying to be the best dad he can be and for sharing his joys and his disappointments so candidly. If you haven’t done so already, I’d encourage you to visit Big City Dad. I think you’ll enjoy it.
So there you have it. Today’s top three. I hope they got some positive reinforcement from this award and will now share this award with ten other bloggers who bring them sunshine (however, they choose to define it). It’s going to be very fun reconnecting and visiting all their great links…at Spring Break!
So, I posted yesterday’s post and a bunch of peeps contacted me today wondering if and why I had a broken heart.
Just to clarify…no…I am not currently experiencing Broken Heart Syndrome.
Yes, I have experienced it many times in the course of my life, with 2009 being a record-breaking year in the relationship department since being single. Contrary to popular belief, a broken heart doesn’t get easier to deal with as one gets older. I think it gets worse. I don’t know why this is.
As for last night’s post, I just wrote and what came out is what came out. Were there any events that triggered that post? That’s a great question!
In all honesty, I’d have to say yes there were incidents that led up to me writing a post on the broken hearted, but it wasn’t my broken heart that started me down that path.
Nor was it the sense of any dying dream that I was coming to grips with having to give up.
In reality, I was just tired.
I was bone weary tired to be exact. It’s been a long, grueling, exhilarating six weeks. The adventure of doing new things, the excitement of opportunity, the hope of what can be possible is both energizing and exhausting. The most difficult element is that when the demanding pace slows, and the seeds that were planted lay momentarily dormant before bursting into full bloom, there is a season of waiting. This waiting can be somewhat anticlimactic.
I know this because I’ve been there in that place of let down after a great experience.
I am not there now. I don’t feel any let down or disappointment or anything other than a sense that something really exciting is just around the corner. Even if the most exciting thing that is around the corner is Spring Break, I still am feeling nowhere near sad, lovelorn or despairing because things somewhere in my life are less than I desire.
The reality is that some things in my life are less than I desire (except where the scale is concerned and then…well…let’s not go there in this post), but I’m not broken up over them. Well, at least, not today. The reality is also that some things in my life are better than I ever could have imagined at this point. It’s also true that there are many, many things in my life that are still unwritten, untold, unimagined. These are the things yet to be which are not now. It’s life. It’s my life. It’s everyone’s life to some degree, I think. The good, the bad, the becoming, the yet to be. The happy, the sad, the exciting, the disappointing…the ever so daily.
Life is just moving along and I like it…at least most of it, most of the time.
No broken heart here, though I’ve had my share of experiences with the Broken Heart Syndrome. No thwarted dreams, though I have a few of those too. The reason I wrote what I wrote yesterday is simply because I sat down to write last night and that post is what came out.
I liked it.
I posted it.
That’s all.
Disclaimer: (Don’t you love that word…I do..it means “I’m making a big fatty excuse to be lazy and careless and sloppy in my writing…sort of…or it means…I’m going to break some rules…so, here goes!)
I really don’t care if this post is SEO (Search Engine Optimized) or not. Well, okay, I care, but I know it probably won’t be because right now, I am writing from my heart and not for an audience. This could bode well for my stream of consciousness and my own well-being. It could suck where my blog stats are concerned. So be it.
I think I just have to say to hell with that.
I need to write what matters to me. After all, the reality is, I’m not likely to get “published” (meaning paid the big bucks with a movie deal) and, well, much as I’d like to be J.K. Rowling right now…so not going to happen. I’m cool with that.
Oh (insert your own special expletive here)! After all that…and I forgot what I was going write about! I hate when that happens.
Four nearly completed (but totally unpolished and incoherent) posts later and it is clear I’m not posting a thing of worth tonight. There’s just too much going on in my mind. Really, really too much. It’s disjointed. It’s random. It’s deep. It’s trivial. It’s about everything and nothing. It’s totally disconnected mostly. It looks like this:
Strands of thoughts from a fellow blogger’s blog who confessed she dreams in advance about things that happen to other people, a dream last night that seemed so real, one I haven’t yet forgotten, I might never forget. It has been my life for the last two years. Different faces, different specifics, same words, same pain, the same, all of it. A scenario I’ve lived many times over in some fashion or another. A scene I am well aquainted with. Wondering if my friend has already dreamed my future and if it will simply be yet another of the many second place finishings I’ve experienced. More ideas and pondering about trust, intimacy, authenticity, connection evaporating in my reality of hidden feelings, unsaid words, unasked questions and confusing behaviors. Goals for the future opportunities and success running parallel with current 2nd place realities with no means to see the two paths join. Happiness, contentment, confidence, hope, enthusiasm and joy all tangled up with disappointment, sadness, longing and, yes, somewhere in there, I must confess, the old familiar sting of pain. Words I want to say but can’t. Ideas to convey, but tangled up with accusations of “not good enough”. Where do these accusers of inadequacy arise and how? Inhibited thoughts that simply can’t get out into visible or audible form, at least, not in a manner that would be comprehensible and confident, let alone adequate.
Sometimes there are days when I simply must say…I tried. I didn’t make it, but I gave it my best effort. I did the best I can, it is all I have to offer. Here it is.
Sometimes there are days when my best doesn’t quite cut it, but it has to be good enough to have tried.
Then there are also times that, in spite of the disconnected randomness of it all, I can look at the craziness called my life and say, everything’s alright and I’m going to be okay.
Tonight is one of those nights.
If you’re like me then you are a reader.
You’re a reader of articles, of stories, of books and blogs.
And…if you’re like me…you don’t just read those articles, stories, books and blogs and cast them aside. No “out of sight out of mind” for you.
If you’re like me you connect with those stories, articles and books, or, at least the ones you love, the ones that resonated with you, the ones that made you think, the ones you gave up moments of your life to pause and listen through the written word, to the voice of another. For a moment, if you’re like me, you enter the world by invitation of the author and you become one with that world.
If you’re like me you think about the characters. No, you do more than think about them. With the help of the author you create them, breathe life into them, worry about them when you’re not reading them and you wonder about them as if the story could continue beyond the printed words the author wrote as if in some Inkspell-ish sort of way…if you’re like me.
If you’re like me, you speculate about the people behind the pen. Those creators of characters, those wielder of words, those visionaries who craft fantasy the way carpenters craft homes and artists their sculptures with such precision and intricate care. You meditate after a fashion on these people who communicate so clearly and so deftly so invisibly. You think about them, about their lives, their loves, their sorrows, their existence, even if only for a fleeting moment and you wonder. What kind of person would it take to write something like that?
If you’re like me you become, in a word, or maybe after many words attached to the invisible artists who’ve helped you create worlds, travel distances and experience lives you might never have known. Or maybe, you do know the life of which they speak and you are all the more drawn to th
em because the existence they share is your existence as well. You know it. You feel it. You live it. And someone chose the words to express it that you yourself could not and you are grateful.
If you’re like me, then in a small way, you may even come to love those invisible craftsmen who work their art in black on white, creating entire galaxies where only blank, dead, white space existed before.
If you’re like me, you wonder what happens when suddenly nothing is heard from them again. The end of a series of books, the last of the articles, a blog abandoned. You wonder what happened in the life of that person that ended their existence in print so suddenly…if you’re like me.
If you’re like me, in those respects, and you’ve been reading along here at The Wild Mind maybe you’ve noticed that where there used to be an almost daily account of distraction, there has been a strange and unusual (at least it has to be for The Wild Mind because look how long her posts usually are!) silence of late. If you’re like me, you would wonder what happen![UnicornRetreat_2201[1] (2)](https://thewildmind.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/unicornretreat_220112.jpg "UnicornRetreat_2201[1] (2)")
ed in the real world to shut down the digital world of the person you’d grown somewhat attached to and were reading every so often.
You would appreciate an explanation…if you are like me. And you would hope that that explanation did not contain news of abandonment, because if you are like me abandonment in all its many forms never goes over well. If you’re like me you even hate it when your favorite TV series gets cancelled. You hated it when you finally finished the Harry Potter Series and you hated it when the Lord of the Rings movies were done. You knew it was the end of the story but somehow you wondered, was it also the end of the author?
You might wonder these things…if you’re like me.
So, today, in my usual procrastinatory (is that even a word) I decided to go through each of the links on my blog roll in an attempt to clarify two things. First, I wanted to see if the bloggers were even still active. I mean, no good sending you to someone really cool who hasn’t written anything really cool since last year…or the year before. I hate that when that happens! I find a blogger I love reading then realize I’m reading something that happened years ago and this person, for all digital intents and purposes, no longer exists. I usually figure this out after I’ve posted a comment only to realize that the last person that commented commented over a year earlier. Yeah, doltish, really. I’d like to spare the handful of readers who do troll silently through my musings here the angst of that experience.
The other thing I’m trying to do is pare down the blog roll. When I first started this blog (has it been a year and a half already?), I put people on that were interesting to me then. I had goals, kinda sorta, in mind for what I wanted this place to be and those people made my blogroll because they seemed to fit the criteria for the kind of resource I wanted to provide my readers. Yeah, well…things change over time. Bloggers change, their blogs change, goals change, life changes, we change and I have definitely changed over the last year and a half…I think. Yeah, I have. I’m still sorting a lot of stuff out and trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up and where I want to be doing it, with whom I want to be doing it, why I want to be doing it are still all up for grabs (well, mostly) but some things have been sorted. The upshot of the sorting is that I’ve decided that I only want certain folks on my blog roll. I have reasons for this.
No! No! It isn’t because I have these elitest, exclusivist or exclusionary tendencies (like some of those really big name blog-for-a-living types that I’m really jealous of because I haven’t made their blogroll yet let alone produced a blog like theirs, but okay!). It is because I think it simply reveals WAY TOO MUCH of my ADD tendencies when I have stuff from all over the universe listed that has nothing to do with anything I’m doing here. Not that I’m doing anything here that is even remotely relevant to the real meaning of life, but it’s sorta fun for me…most of the time. Even so, I think it is time for this little bloggy to grow up a bit and look a little more…um….what’s the word I’m looking for…respectable? Ordered? Thought out? Put together? I don’t know…something like that.
I have a really easy way of determining if I want someone to stay on my blog roll. If I know them in real life and they are a family member or close friend, they’re automatically in. Well, unless they request not to be. That’d tell me something now wouldn’t it? If they are just someone out there in the blogosphere then they have to meet two criteria:
Oh, wait, there’s a third…
Anyway, there you have it. The reason why some of you might find your names missing on the blog roll and why others will find they’ve been added. Mostly those who have been deleted so far are folks who aren’t writing anyway and probably don’t care. If I deleted you and you do care, post a comment. Everything’s fixable, well, mostly everything. If you wander in and like what you read, let me know. If you have a blog and you’d like to be added let me know that too. I’d be glad to visit your place and take a look around.
Off I go to peruse postings and look at links while avoiding adult responsibilities like laundry, dishes and dealing with other diverse forms of dirt. I’ve come across a few great bloggers who still rate and need a shout out. Well, they don’t need it, they are mostly doing fine without my recognition. I need it, because what they said, how they said it, what they experienced, resonated with me in a way that I feel is worth voicing. Look for me to share these folks with you in the days to come. I hope you’ll visit them and find them interesting too!
Yep! I have this sign posted in a visible place where I will see it daily. Most people find it amusing. Some want it for themselves because they find it humorous. I personally think it is a sad statement about me that the sign is not a joke for me…I actually use this sign and lately more so than usual. It’s back-to-school time again and with it comes the usual transition from lazy (or at least very relaxed and unscheduled) days to a lifestyle that moves at warp speed.
Add to this, that I’ve just sent my first child off to college which is both a blessing and a hindrance all of which equates to one big adjustment for the family. As if we haven’t been through enough adjustments in the last few years.
I guess the statement, “The only constant is change” really is more true than not. I should after all this time be getting used to it.
The reality? I haven’t written as often nor as well as I’d like here of late.
Currently, I’m working on a piece about the significance of phallic symbols in post modern society. I know. I know. People think I’m crazy, but while the ancient Egyptians were quite open and unreserved about phallic symbols, we as a more evolved culture are less so or so it seems. I have some theories about this. I don’t think we are less interested in them. In fact, I think, if we just look phallic symbols are everywhere. But then maybe that’s just me…
Stay tuned. When I get through this next week and I get time to really research this topic, I’ll let you know what I discovered. In the meantime, if you’re so inspired and you have any information you’d like to add as I develop my thoughts, don’t hesitate to share your insights in a comment here.
The Wild Mind 
