Shall I keep on going? Which way?

byTitaWorks

1.9K followers

3 years ago

January's been a month of introspection and review for me...in between the madness of churning out year-end owner reports for my day-job.

With all the hoo-hah and drama in this consensus-world of ours on top of my own personal madness, I thought I'd take a month off and look where I am standing, what I've done in my explorations so far, and where I want to go next, given the changes wrought by world-events and such and the impact on our overheated, hyper-materialistic, postmodern consensus-world.

After I had gotten the old year tucked into bed, I started in on yet another house de-cluttering project, figuring that I'd be able to think better if I got rid of some of the flotsam and jetsam that wandered into my life while I wasn't looking (for a year or three).

I happened to be clearing out an old trunk when I ran across a copy of a "legacy" artsy-fartsy journal that I put together on a dare from my daughter, who, after the birth of her son, Kekoa, sent along a lovely-looking pre-made blank journal of about 200 pages with lots of room for blathering on about heavy-duty life-topics.

I was supposed to spout old grandma wisdom (or something like that) that would be cherished by the chill'n or whatever. Yeah, right.

I actually didn't touch the thing until a couple of years later when my granddaughter Skye was born. (The pressure from the direct descendant was getting somewhat intense-r.)

So, I started on it.

I promised my babies I would explain my thoughts about the big things in life as simply as I could. I wrote out those thoughts using colored pens and pencils, line drawings, doodles, stickers, some paint, hand-carved block prints, petroglyph rubbings and so on.

I added lots and lots of photo collages of their mom as a kid with her brother and assorted relatives doing kid stuff. (Cut down on the writing space wonderfully!)

Then I copied the whole thing and sent the original off to the gang. It was well-received.

I re-read my entries in the thing -- blatherings about how you make your own life meaningful and the importance of connecting with other people and things like being authentic and true and the joy of striving for excellence and the need to make room for the Creative in your life. I even got a few licks in about death and dying.

The kids are grown now. My grandson just finished college. (He was an early starter.) His sister is just starting her run. That journal's almost two decades old.

And my thoughts, it seems, have not changed very much. Apparently, I've just continued to walk my talk, expanding and growing the ideas I had when I was putting together that granny "talk-story" opus.

It mostly went well for me, those years. Going on that way has helped me make a full and joyous (if sometimes precarious) life. It's all good.

I was pleased to note that I was right about one thing at least: The only thing that abides is the way you walk. All the rest sort of fades, falls apart, or goes away.

I started the blog thing because I was planning to do a book of some sort or other that featured my poetry. But, it seems I already did a book -- just without the poetry in it.

It occured to me that what I am doing with the blog is breaking down how (and why) the ideas I followed and the choices I made resulted in a life where I got to try walking down some really interesting pathways and the everyday marvelous discoveries I made along the way.

I throw in the now-obligatory "scientific" research which seems like a lot of people getting interviewed about how they think or feel about whatever and then all that miscellany stacked up this way and that to make some point or other.

(I have always wondered why we've been sort of conditioned to accept ideas that are supposedly "scientific" just because somebody or other with alphabet soup after their name went around doing surveys and silly mind-games and then put together their "findings" and constructed more theories -- a.k.a. "educated guesses" -- and then published something.)

I throw in stories about other people's walks that had good life-results too. I also throw in thoughts from ancient wise guys and native peoples and other smarty pants. Their ideas, I notice, often work out pretty well.

All of this stuff is starting to make a something. I'm not sure what yet. And I find I still want to play some more.

This year, I have been doing long, long posts that do multiple takes on a topic. The posts ask a lot of my readers...perhaps too much. The posts are made for long, slow thinking, and sometimes that can get to be tiresome.

Sometimes it's just cool to be-bop along.

Maybe I am needing to get back to doing shorter pieces that do little fireworks bursts in the head rather than massive New Year's fireworks displays. Still thinking....

Hope your journey's going well.