Except that I was lured (not intentionally, but by mention) back by my dear friend Michael in his farewell tribute. He's a keeper.

I blog over at WordPress for the most part now, although I do still have a few of my Blogger blogs going as well. Most of those entries have been imported to my WordPress blog, finally centralizing all of my blogging in one spot--or at least all that I could remember, and NOT including my entries here since I haven't seen where WordPress imports from Xanga (I will be checking on that). I'm not sure if I would ever want to fully leave this blog, though. I have a life membership my sweet husband gave me in 2007 so I wouldn't let it go entirely.

I do hope Xanga will continue to allow free blogging. I don't believe they will be able to compete in this market otherwise.

I think I will always have a special spot in my heart for Xanga. Heck, maybe I can even help revive it a bit. It could happen.

Nobody told me that writing a book is so much like giving birth. This is crazy.

I've had a book swimming around in my head for years. Correction: Make that books. It's a wonder I can think at all with all this stuff jumping around in here.

Wow, the confusion!

There's a thought--better write that down!

Where?

Wait, can't blog it--it should go in the book!

Which one?

How should I know? You're the writer!

I am? Oh, wait. Yes...yes, I am. I am?

You've known it your whole life. Pull yourself together, woman.

Am I the only idiot who has involved conversations with herself?

Probably.

Shut up.

You asked.

Yes, I suppose I did. Now what? Where do I go from here? 

Enough with the italics. Too much introspection. Good grief. This has to be hormone-driven.

What is happening to me? Is this the part where I look back and see with startling clarity the Braxton-Hicks contractions of those first scribbled stories, the years of teaching creative writing, the lifestory coaching, the endless journaling, the sporadic ebb and flow of blogging? Where I suddenly realize that maybe this is really it, that maybe I really am finally in labor--that I am about to have a book? Or maybe it's just another one of those dreams about giving birth to an alien. I don't know what's happening, but I do know this is scary mess.

Forget boiling water. I need coffee.

These are happier times, and I have Write Where It Hurts to thank for it. Jo Ann and Kate, I don't deserve the love and encouragement the two of you (along with the beautiful WWIH community) have brought into my life, but I am truly grateful. Not only do I feel like I can start really writing again, I actually feel like I'm being equipped and encouraged to do so in ways that are simultaneously pushing me forward and sending me deeper into myself to search out the story. 

I am praying over a way to attend at least one writers conference this year. I feel like this is the next step toward publishing--the lifelong dream I had begun to wonder if I should just put down. God isn't letting me put it down.

So I'm dusting off the cobwebs and oiling the rusty hinges and I'm writing--really writing--again. I have to say it feels amazing.

I've come to talk with you again.

Sad that this blog seems to have become the dumping ground for sadness and confusion. Then again, maybe it's just become the safe place for all that's real.

I suppose ideally it will be the people who want to read the real me who come here. Anyone else will just be put off, and that's okay. 

I don't even know if I have anything to say today, so I'm not completely sure why I'm here. 

Natalie Goldberg says writers are noted for battling depression. I remember reading that and thinking maybe that explains some things. I battle it with some regularity lately, but thankfully I do still have the gumption for battling it instead of crawling into a hole and letting it have me. I don't plan to wind up where so many famous writers have all too quickly ended.

I've been processing a deep disappointment over the past week or so. As with all the disappointments that have come before it, I will come through it; it will just take a little while. Not the first time I've had my friendship handed back to me in unceremonious fashion, and unfortunately it probably won't be the last. Hopefully each time I go through it, it will get a little easier. I can always hope. Maybe I can at least learn something from each one so I'm stronger in the end. I really don't even want to talk about it any more. It's over, just move on. I'm a big girl and I'll be fine.

I'd really like to rekindle the writing habit. I miss it, and I'm fairly certain it would be helpful to get back to pouring myself into words. I may be doing some writing for Write Where It Hurts. I've always been better at helping others than myself, so maybe this is a good thing. 

I keep to myself a lot lately. It's safest alone or just with Steve, who is my rock in this challenging world. Dealing with peri-menopausal hormone swings necessitates some measure of pulling inward, if only to safeguard those I love from the uncertainty of my emotions these days. I'm not the freak-out type, but I do get really sad sometimes and I'd just as soon not inflict that on anyone else. Lucky Steve, he gets me in all my realness, all the time.

It will just be the Pizzaman and me tonight while the kids are out. Just the two of us here in our quaint little house on Memory Lane, snuggled up together against the cold.

This is not a socially acceptable butterflies and sunshine post.

This is a little more real than that. Because most days I try hard to keep whatever I write positive and upbeat and encouraging.

And then there are days like today when I want to scream myself hoarse and then hide under a rock for weeks. Maybe years.

Whether this means I am inching closer to menopause, or I really am just the loser I feel like I am, it sucks. 

Whatever this stage is, whatever the phase, whatever the season of life, I hope it passes quickly. I don't like it here.

I want to move out of New Port Nowhere, back to civilization where schedules are respected and people care and I actually have friends and do things with people and I have a life and feel like there is some purpose to my days. Where I have some kind of help with homeschooling so I don't feel like I'm out on a limb alone. Where I can go to the bookstore sometimes and sip coffee and smell the books and spend time with a friend. Where I'm not haunted by the ever looming reason we moved to this place to begin with.

I want to be on the other side of the move, after the packing and the TRYING to sort through and get rid of stuff and being overwhelmed over what to get rid of and how to get it all into a truck we can't afford to rent and move it to a house we had to hunt for and qualify for, after the starting up of utilities and changing of address and the goodbyes to the few people up here who have truly become dear. I want to look BACK on all of this.

There are moments when I feel like if this doesn't happen soon I might go insane.

I wonder if anyone really stops to think about how their words and actions affect others. It blows my mind the way some people just bark out changes and expect everyone around them to suck it up and change whatever needs to be changed and roll with it. And my role, as I understand it, is to keep my mouth shut and make the changes and break other plans and make the appropriate apologies for how it all affects others--because, see, here's the thing: I DO CARE HOW WHAT I DO AFFECTS OTHER PEOPLE!

This is one of those days when I feel like everyone, including me, would be better off if I went back to bed, pulled up the covers, and cried myself into a coma.

Maybe people would at least be kind.

Okay, probably not, but the tiny shred of optimist in me would like to think so.

Enough. This is too long already.

Internet Island Topic Post #37: Apocalypse and Disaster

37.1 What do you think about the state of the world at this moment in history? Is there a global paradigm shift going on? A Biblical Apocalypse? Or is it just business as usual seemingly magnified by the presence of a 24 hour news cycle and instant reporting and punditing by the blogosphere? 

You made me smile with your inclusion of Charlie Sheen among all the natural disasters. What surprises (okay, annoys) me more than Mr. Sheen being a bit fruity is that so many people are all over his antics, buying tickets to see/hear him, paying hard-earned money to hear the guy rant. Really? 

I would have to say I believe it is the groanings of the world that have been going on since the beginning, although I do find it ironic that so much is happening so close together and have commented several times to that effect. I have always worried about cities (especially densely populous ones) and things like nuclear plants being built on such volatile fault lines. It's terrible to observe the fallout of all of this, and it makes me wonder what will change, what will happen as a result. I wondered the same thing after Hurricane Katrina.

I read something today to the effect that people can tell a lot about the type of leader one is by whether s/he attracts positive or negative people. I thought about that for a good while, mulling it over in my head and thinking about the profound truth contained in those few words. 

I think back to a time not so long ago when a good number of the people I associated with on a regular basis were very negative people who kept negativity stirred up constantly, and it affected my family and me in some pretty unsettling ways. I didn't realize it while these people were being pruned from my life, but when I read that statement today, suddenly it all made sense.

I really had to take stock of how I had allowed myself to fall into such a deep pit of negativity. Had I just allowed it, or had I invited it? It didn't just happen overnight, and I do remember occasions when I knew I was saying something displeasing to God and I didn't heed His voice. Yes, that is how it happened. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out. It was my own depravity and neglect and disobedience, plain and simple.

Thankfully, there is His grace, always available and always complete when we repent and turn back to Him. I am grateful beyond description for that.

It's kind of amazing how much lighter I have felt over the past couple of months. And I know it isn't just because there are fewer negative people in my life, either. No, reading One Thousand Gifts has brought some pretty significant change for me. I don't remember any other book that I finished and wanted nothing more than to start back at chapter one and read the whole thing through again right then.

By contrast, the people I've been creating and building friendships with lately are some of the most lovely people I've ever met, most of them bloggers I've met through the Bloom Book Club study of OTG. What beautiful ladies, these, precious and treasured already.

And so I wonder if maybe this is to be where my guts spill out onto the floor, onto the keyboard, onto the screen, my fleshing out of a million thoughts swirling at once with no rhyme or reason, not yet something sweet and edifying to go on Write, Pray, Love or a decent response to One Thousand Gifts, but just me, Lisa Easterling dot com, my raw heart open and beating out loud for the world to see.

Baked potatoes are placed piping hot on little white diner-style plates for lunch. Vitamin C and protein in the form of cheese and butter and sour cream to complete the healing of respiratory illness that thankfully usually only lurks once a year. My potato, cut, falls open in the perfect shape of an elongated heart. Gift. I eat it slowly, skin and all, grateful that something so healthy tastes so wonderful.

Back at my desk with my little diner plate off to my left, I find myself frequently returning to my contemplative posture, head in hands and quiet, thinking. Sometimes there's just too much at once. Too much sickness, too much loss, too much to do, too much clutter, too many schedules, too many worries, too many expectations, too many steps to do something simple. I have an invitation to submit writing for a company I've loved for years, and I look at the necessary steps and feel like the walls are closing in. Maybe another time, I think. Again. Deep down I wonder if it will ever happen, and a too-big part of me opines that it probably won't. I'm too tired to argue.

I cut the tops off my potato heart and chew without tasting, my mind engaged elsewhere. This must be what Natalie Goldberg meant when she said artists are moody, depressive people. Only I don't want to go down the road many of the more famous ones have traveled. I would love to keep living for a good long time yet.

I've been writing verse and sentiments for myself and others for as long as I can remember. I've been told that I am one of the best at wording the thoughts of others so perfectly it's like I am walking around in their heads and hearts. Will I ever do these things on a higher professional level? I don't know. But can I do it? I know I can. I have, many times and in many situations. It's one of a small handful of things about which I actually feel confident in stating, "Yes. I am good at that!"

When on the rare occasion I ask if anyone is listening (reading), the responses are somewhat predictable though varied. There's the placating, the preachy, and the philosophical. And then there's the occasional genuine straight-shot from the heart, the truly helpful ones that I ponder for a while and carry around with me.

I think somewhere along the line I will have to separate myself from my writing more, not become wounded when people I know and love--people who know and love me back--don't seem interested in reading what I write. That's easy to theorize about but not so easy to put into practice, not when my writing feels like such a personal part of who I am. What flows from my heart and mind through my fingers is a part of me, something birthed from the artistic parts of my being, something I dare to hold out to a waiting world. It's hard to hold out an offering and feel the weight of it sitting long in the hand untouched. It gets heavier and heavier and I admit sometimes I am tempted to toss it on the ground and walk away.

I am blogging quite often at Write, Pray, Love lately. I invite readers to head over there to check things out.

I am also blogging my thoughts during a book study of Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts HERE.

I won't stop blogging here, but right now those two blogs have most of my attention. Hope to see you there!

Lately I've been reading back over posts from the past 8 years, reacquainting myself with the writer's voice I've had all along but seem to have misplaced somewhere along the way. Maybe I didn't misplace it. Maybe I just wasn't using it enough to keep it honed.

On the upside, I seem to have found it again, or at least I am well on my way in the process. I am remembering how much I love weaving words and how amazing it feels to word creatively and put thoughts into print. I didn't realize how much I've missed it. I am starting to realize it now.

Now comes the process of defining, of organizing thought. I even find myself trying to form some sort of writing philosophy, as though a passion for writing creatively can be encased in a labeled way of thinking. No, it is too vast for that. I should know this. I do know this.

And so I continue to delve into this process, digging in and pushing past the surface to see what is really there--what has been there along but covered up. I feel like it's been snowed under. I'm hoping spring is on its way.