Winter projects

We have been in the midst of moving.

For months I have been culling our stuff.

So much stuff.

Stuff piles up.

Stuff clutters our homes and our lives.

Stuff takes up space.

Some stuff likes to be ignored as it sits quietly in dark corners of the basement.

But moving time provides a good chance to face the piles and get rid of the stuff no longer needed.  And so we are. 

I tackled my archives.  

So many bins filled with so many sheets of paper.

Notes from courses taken.

Lesson plans for courses taught.

I sorted and pitched.

I recycled reams of paper.

But I also began to discover patterns.

Stories about who I had been decades ago.

Stories that disclosed that I wasn’t always right.

Stories of lessons learned.

Health and healing and transformation.

I found fresh appreciation for my life.

I suddenly realized the great privilege before me.

This huge task gradually shifted its very shape.

Yes, it was still something that I’ve “got to do.”

But… it also showed itself as something I GET to do. 

Who gets this kind of gift?

Who gets to sit down in retirement years and read through one’s own history?  This is the stuff of my life. My heritage.

Who gets to pause and sift through the memories and celebrate one’s own life?

Who gets to assess one’s direction while there’s still time to make changes?

A few file boxes were selected.

These few DID make the move with me.

However they will not be hauled to THIS basement.

They will not be forgotten again.

Instead they are sitting right here so I can see them every day.  

I often pause to greet them.

I look forward to sitting down together for the read of a lifetime.  

I daydream about writing projects that will come together. 

Any number of topics wait for me to glean those memories.

But first some precious time to read.

To remember and to marvel.

What a fun project for this next season!

Fifteen years of blogging

I started a blog

Fifteen years ago.

I didn't know how.

I'm not exactly tech-savvy.

But somebody told me that Blogspot made the process pretty easy so I tried.

Sure enough it was.

Easy enough for this 60-year-old to feel like I was writing a blog.

Kind of.

Sort of

Although maybe it felt like I was pretending…

I didn’t really know what to say. Experts would not recommend starting a blog if you didn’t have something to say.  Or until you figured that out.

But hey!  I decided to give it a shot.

Because you see… 

I had heard myself saying… or at least thinking… that I might want to be a writer, but didn’t know what that might mean.

I really had no idea where in the world to start.

I was lucky enough to bump into some people who encouraged me rather than laughing at my silly idea and I eventually came to the conclusion that I could call myself a writer if I was writing. That might have been about the time I heard of the idea of starting a blog.

Oh, yes; I was starting to say…

I decided to give it a shot.

To start a blog.

And so on January 9, 2010, I set up a Blogspot account, make up a quirky little name for my blog, and typed some lines that became my first blog post.  

• I wonder if I should start a new blog.
• I wonder if I can be consistent about blogging regularly.
• I wonder what I should include in my blog.
• I wonder if I should establish certain patterns or routines.
• I wonder if anyone will read my blog.
• I wonder if anyone will like what they read.
• I wonder if anyone will comment…
• I wonder if any of this matters in the greater scheme of things.

I guess I wondered about a lot of things.

Then I realized I must figure out what in the world to write about and how often.  Turns out the experts have opinions about those questions, too - like how you must build an audience and you must post often.  AND consistently!!!  

Wise rules I’m sure, but I might have had the sense to know that I wasn’t really ready for an audience.  I think I somehow knew that I was just writing for me at first.  

This was a chance to practice

To experiment

To try stuff out & see what worked

To brainstorm ideas & topics

So…

I tried out ideas that felt important to me. 

I wondered about things I was curious about. 

I featured quotes that inspire me.

I wrote about gratitude & other virtues I wished to emulate.

About things I was learning.

Sometimes I wrote regularly and other times not so much. It occurred to me that I probably ought to commit to at least a minimum schedule - or I might just trail off and forget to blog.  Indeed that seemed to be somewhat common; lots of bloggers seem to eventually trail off and disappear. 

So I pondered what might be an achievable goal.  Once a week seemed pretty small, but even then I wasn’t really sure I could always do it and didn't want to set myself up for failure.  So I would post at least once a month. Almost embarrassingly minuscule, but maybe I was learning the value of tiny steps.

It turned out to be sufficiently small - and got me through more than one writing slump.  Not all of my posts were wonderful, but I was proud of my consistency in cranking them out for a lot of years.

Until that one time…

Yep, I forgot to write… in February 2023.

I discovered my omission in early March…

Oh, no!  I see that I have failed to post here during February.  

I feel like a failure. 

It was my only real goal for my blog… to post at least once a month… and I have mostly succeeded for well over a decade.

But now I have failed.

What should I do with my failure?  

Too late to fix it.  

Okay; my first thought was that maybe I could still write something and pre-date it.  

To pretend the failure didn’t happen.

To give the appearance of doing well.

Or I can choose to admit my error and move on.

Go ahead and write a post for this month - or maybe even two.

But don’t pretend to be perfect.

...

And what about that name I chose for my blog all those years ago when I didn’t have a clue what I was doing or what I might write about? Wondering as I wander?

I guess I kept thinking about wondering and wandering. Amazingly I have ended up being astounded at how appropriate that label has turned out to be through the years. I wondered about so many things. And sure enough I wandered from one topic to another.

...

But then there came a day a few months later when we made a totally unexpected decision that would completely change our lives - our direction, our schedules, and our location. You might say we “wondered” about the idea of selling our beloved Christmas tree farm and “wandering” the globe for awhile.

Little did we know the wonderings and wanderings that awaited us. 

That such a major change meant that we would wander to so many places.

And we would wonder about so many things.

And... little did I know that I would end up writing a book about those very wonderings and wanderings.

New Year's Eve - Looking Back

 On the last day of the year, I like to take time to look back over the months of the previous year. 

This year I am also taking time to step back and notice that this is the 10th anniversary of another rather spectacular NYE.  That evening found us in BB King’s Blues Club on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, enjoying catfish & ribs and some great music.

On that NYE in 2014 we were just striking out on our second winter in the RV - this time in the southern states - where we would live on for one month each on three different islands.

That first year of RV life had been an amazing adventure.  We lived in that second-hand fifth-wheel for more than 7 months that year -  working in Southern California from January through May and traveling to Alaska in June and July before landing back in Michigan until selling the Christmas tree farm later in the year.  What a phenomenal year it had been.  So that NYE dinner on Beale Street and camping on the other side of the Mississippi River became a significant transition moment in our lives.

And now here we are this NYE - living a smaller and less dramatic adventure - on one side of the street watching the snowflakes fluttering down and waiting for the moment when we will be able to move to the newly rescued and refurbished house across the street.

Home for Christmas?

"Do you think you’ll be in the new place by Christmas?"

...

People had been asking us that for awhile.

During September & October it seemed possible.

Probable even.

Bob finished up the last items necessary for final inspections and called it in.

Normal protocol is for the city inspectors to make an appointment within a couple days. Instead it turned into 3 weeks and then 6 weeks and now 3 months - which will be the end of January.

Christmas music “promises” I’ll be home for Christmas.

Where the love light gleams...

Because there’s no place like home for the holidays.

Each delay was disappointing - but we worked hard at packing our stuff and getting it ready to haul across the street as soon as we got the word.  Since we really had no idea what day or week that might be, the packing strategy was more than a little stressful.  

And now we know.

We won’t be moved in by Christmas.

Fortunately, we do still have a home.

We can still be at home for Christmas.

Admittedly with many of our possessions packed and stacked, we did not pull out most of the usual holiday decorations.  

But we have a place to sleep with a roof over our heads - unlike many people - and we are grateful.

And we do have experience at transitional holiday lodging...  

Like those couple years when we were able to live in the historical log cabin at our beloved Christmas tree farm!  

That was bonus.  

What a fun place to live!

After selling the tree farm and before hitting the road again, a room in our daughter’s basement became home for us for a few weeks.  

And this place has been a wonderful home for us through seven Christmases.  

Wait; make that eight now…

So... even though we couldn’t move into the new place quite yet, we realized we could celebrate by enjoying a family dinner there together. 

It had to be simple... so we just did Chinese take-out.  

And yes, it was fun.  

It was a chance to start to feel more at home there.

To experiment a bit and figure out what works where.

To discover that indeed the love light gleams in that place.

Sure enough, we are able to be home for the holidays.  

Even though it isn't quite the way we had hoped.