A new beginning

I’ve been quiet here for the last few weeks as I’ve pondered what comes next for me, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy.

In fact, I’ve decided that it’s time to take my work up a notch by owning my work, something I did not feel at liberty to do fully here. In order to do that, I am starting over with a new blog—one that I can claim publicly!

I’ve used the last few weeks to pick a theme, create a new blog/website, and get started on some content. It’s still pretty rough around the edges as I feel my way into this new beginning and find my voice in this new venture, but you can find me now at AKintsugiLife.com.

I hope you’ll join me there. You’ll find that I’m still writing about very similar themes, but I’ve cut back to 2-3 posts a week in order to free up time for other writing projects.

Thanks again to all of you who have followed me here and have joined me on this journey through the chrysalis. I think it’s time for me to begin emerging from this chrysalis to fly forward into what life has for me next. It’s both terrifying and exciting!

I’d love to have your company on this new beginning!

Thanks for three great years!

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the start of this blog. First and foremost, I want to say THANK YOU to all of you who read, like, and comment on my posts. I am blessed to have such awesome readers! You consistently inspire me to new growth.

I’ve gone through periods of faithful daily posting, periods of silence, and periods of sporadic posting, but somehow I’ve managed to write over 550 posts (on this blog) during that time. It’s fun to look back at those early posts and see how my writing has changed with time.

Nice is a four letter word

I grew up in the South, so I learned early that good Christian girls (and women) were expected to always be “nice.” This fundamental edict is ingrained in me at a very deep level, and I measure myself against it constantly.

But being “nice” is also killing me.

Small gratitudes

One of the many self-care practices I generally implement when going through dark times is a gratitude practice. This can be as simple as keeping a gratitude journal where I write down a list of five things that I am grateful for from the day before I go to bed. It can also be as extensive as using my 101-bead gratitude “necklace” to count off 101 things I’m grateful for from the day.

Often I implement this practice once I’m already down in the midst of the darkness when I’m trying to climb my way back out of the pit. This time I was already using my daily gratitude journal practice before the downward slide even began. It’s interesting to notice the difference.

When “support” goes wrong

When I go through challenging circumstances of any kind, my first inclination is to blame myself. I look for ways that I must have been at fault to cause the hardship. This is even more the case when the challenges are from difficult relationships.

In fact, the single biggest thing that gets me in trouble in relationships is that I am so tuned in to what I think other people are wanting, needing, thinking, feeling that I am unable to honor my own wants, needs, thoughts, and feelings. This leads me to ignore my intuition under the assumption that I must be the one that’s wrong when there’s a conflict between what my intuition is telling me and what someone else wants.

Celebrity deaths

One of my (many) oddities is that I am rather clueless about most celebrities. Because I don’t have a TV, rarely go to movies, don’t pay attention to sports, and do not follow mainstream music, I am unaware of who most of these people are. And even if I’ve heard people mention the names, I am entirely unable to recognize most celebrities in photographs. So news about the trials, tribulations, or even deaths of these famous people generally leaves me rather unmoved because I don’t know who they are.

Authors tend to be a different story for me. I love to read, and books have often been my closest friends in that they have expanded my world, encouraged me in tough times, and helped me to grow. The authors that write these books that mean so much to me—most of whom I have never met in any way—feel like distant friends because they have shared so much of themselves with me in the writing of their books. When one of these authors dies, I feel the loss.

Belief and faith

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

Belief and faith are words that tend to be used interchangeably in many religious circles, but I think of them differently. Belief is the holding of a mental proposition to be true. Faith is trusting in something or someone even without proof.

For me, belief comes from the head. Faith comes from the heart.

Choices

I’ve long believed that every choice is both a yes and a no. For everything that I say yes to, I am saying no to something else. Everything that I say no to is a yes to a different choice. It’s always a trade-off.

I tend to go against the cultural norm by saying no to a lot of things that other people say yes to, but in every case, it is because I am saying yes to something that is more valuable to me (even though it doesn’t fit the “norm”).

What we worship

I’ve been reading and pondering a really fantastic new book by Peter Rollins called The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction. It’s an excellent book, and it’s really challenging me to think (in a good way) about a lot of things.

One of those things is taking a hard look at what an idol really is, how we worship idols, and which idols show up in my own life. I’m discovering that idols don’t always look like I expect them to and that I am not always consciously aware of what I worship.

Fleeing the impending doom of change

As part of my ongoing attempts to shift my mood and emotional state, I have been slowly doing a bit of rearranging at home. I’m trying to reduce clutter, brighten things up a bit, clean out stuff I no longer want/need, change things around to give a sense of newness.

It feels really good … to me, anyway. My cats are much less enthused about this process.