The Spikes and Booms of Life (and blogging)

Everything we do in life reflects us back at ourselves, not unlike a mirror only there’s more to it, which is sometimes hard to see and easy to miss.

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For instance, just now…

I had the urge to write a post.

Writing posts is something which I do for myself. It’s a selfish indulgence.

My posts tend to start out as a conversation in my mind which I’m having with myself (which includes the imaginary social group inside my head), that then spills out as cyber ink onto cyber paper. By writing out the conversation, I find myself listening with more attention to what I’m saying. It fleshes things out, makes the abstract visible. By sharing the conversation publicly, I stop myself from forgetting it, pretending it never happened. If I do forget, it’s there as a reminder.

Doing this sometimes helps me to figure things out.

This blog serves many purposes for me, some of which scare the crap out of me – which is a useful experience.

Things like this message which I received yesterday from WordPress…

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… scare the crap out of me.

Sometimes there is an element of thrill to such an experience. A YAY! coupled with an EEK!. Like riding a roller coaster, being chased by a wasp, or falling down the stairs and finding you’re unhurt when you reach the bottom.

I once fainted at the top of the stairs, had a peaceful dream during the loss of consciousness, which I guess was there to mitigate the pain which had caused the faint. I recall waking up with a blissful smile… then pain returned with reality. There’s more to this story than I have shared… there always is for all of us.

So many details in the mirror of life… which is why we sometimes choose to focus our attention on one aspect of it, to simplify it, but what are we missing through doing that?.

by Wrong Hands

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I’ve tried to simplify blogging for myself, to keep it fun (even when it scares me).

I don’t make money from my blog. Yes, there are ads on my blog but those are how WordPress makes money so people like me can blog for free. I have no plans to pay for what I’m doing or to be payed for it.

I have no plans at all for what I’m doing here. That’s part of the pleasure of doing it – I have no idea of where this is going, if it is going anywhere, how long it will last and so on. Not knowing… is both fun and frightening, and the two things intertwine.

That’s my life in a nutshell.

I do however get a lot from what I do here.

Also a part of my life nutshell.

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When the urge to write a post hit, something else hit simultaneously…

The urge to do something for someone else.

I paused and hovered between doing something for myself and doing something for someone else. The longer I remained undecided who should come first, the more the urge to write a post dissipated. So I opted to do something for someone else first.

I told myself that I was getting it out of the way which would then allow me to concentrate on what I wanted to do for myself without being distracted by the thought of someone else needing something done for them by me. Doing something for someone else, was doing something for me… or something like that.

In other words – I told myself a story.

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by Dave Whamond

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Being human is so complex.

However doing something for someone else first, changed what I was going to do for myself afterwards. It changed the post which I was going to write, because it changed the conversation.

Usually I have found that this is for the best. It’s evolution in a natural moment by moment flow.

This blog was created because of one thing leading to another. It’s seed began with someone doing something for me, which led to me doing something for myself, then someone else suggested I share what I had done for myself with others, and the wheels kept turning, shifting from self to other, and other to self, things blended, changed, evolved… they’re still doing that.

I’ve recently been experiencing a case of blog-lag…

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via 5 Stages of a Blogger’s Life

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…it’s more a case of life-lag, of being-myself-lag, and this blog reflects that back at me.

A message like the one above about my blog stats reminds me that it’s not all about me, and… that I’m a part of other people’s lives reflecting themselves back at them. As they are for me.

Did I mention how complicated this is… this being human, this life… this…

Thank you…

… for scaring the crap out of me!

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