August 5, 2024
I often suspect I am a terrible blogger! I don’t post dynamic articles every week. I want to…I have random thoughts about things to say, but they don’t seem worthy or monumental enough to warrant your time. Or maybe even my time.
It takes time and effort to move random thoughts to insightful “wow” paragraphs on a page. Its work. Granted, work I love, and I write for myself every day, but for you? Well I have discovered that I have set the bar very, very high when writing for others. I’m thinking maybe that’s been a mistake.
Maybe the “real” will speak to you more than the “ideal.” And just maybe putting the “real” out there for you all to see will benefit me also. Can I be vulnerable and let you walk with me before I have everything figured out?
I like it better when I “get all my ducks in row”, so to speak, and then write a blog to tell you all about it. But isn’t that what makes all of us so lonely, yearning for connection? Yearning for something, something we can’t quite put into words?
Social media has given us two things: a perfect picture of the life and house and appearance we want, and it also gives us lots of things to be angry about, to be dissatisfied with, to be afraid of. Both messages tell us to work harder to achieve a goal. But so often we are left hanging with “how do I do that” or “it’s hopeless, I give up” or just letting us lash out in lots of little angry outburst all day long.
So I’ve decided to write lots more blogs about the real me. What I have written all these past years is the real me, I don’t mean that it isn’t. I’m just trying to say that I am going to share even when I don’t have it all, blog-ready, figured out yet. The real me is often slow at getting from one messy emotional state to an insightful, peaceful state. I get there, always, but the road is not smooth. I get crabby. And I overcome that but then that’s all I let you see. The overcomer me.
Maybe you’ll want to take this journey with me, comment on it, be here with me. Maybe not. And that’s ok cause there’s lots of end result articles out there for you. But for me, I need something more, not sure how to define it yet.
This has been a hard year for me, for my family.
Retired husband and me learning how to navigate aging minds and bodies. Learning how not to still think we have to find some work to do like mowing lawns and mopping floors. Keep working. We are learning how to rest. We are learning that our worth or usefulness isn’t tied to how much we’ve “produced”. Well, we are trying to learn that!
Learning to adjust to changing family stuff. I’ve always done all the holidays, but I have a tiny house and we now have grandchildren-turned-adults. And great-grandchildren! Love them all, love every moment with all of them together, but it doesn’t seem work as well in this house anymore. There’s no real conversation, no intimacy because we are twenty people of all ages cramped in one small room. Hard to play any game with that age span in that small space. We found we are just doing it cause we’ve always done it this way. But when it leaves all of us just tired, then it needs to change. What that looks like we haven’t settled on yet. I’ll write about that in the future.
I turned 81 this year and have had some health setbacks. Priding myself on my fitness to hike tough trails, to camp alone in remote mountain places, I am now finding it tougher to do. And every fiber of my being refuses to accept that. I jokingly say, but with some truth, that I have a 30 year old brain that doesn’t realize it is trapped in an 80 year old body. This is really tough as I learn to balance my pride and enthusiasm with realistic wisdom. I’ll write more about this also.
I’ve had some huge relationship setbacks that I am finding it hard to accept. Hard to find a balance between taking all the blame on myself just to fix it or…what? I don’t know about this either. Thinking I’m going to talk to a counselor about it. My history is to always take the blame, to cover other’s wrongful behavior. I’m really good at not doing that in my outer circle. Terrible at it in my very inner circle. Always caving in, always taking the blame, I know is not always best for the other person. Accountability has to be somewhere in this equation, but I don’t know where to put it. Accusations slung at me are devastating and I can’t stop thinking about them – even when others assure me that they are false. I’m a words person, and words hurt. I’m going to blog more about these struggles too, as I think almost all of us struggle here. Maybe you have some insights that can help us all as we navigate this road.
This is enough said for now, I think. I’ll write more about one of the above this month for sure. I promise! Watch for it!
Best wishes and blessings on your week!
Clara
Wildly Clara 
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