As I child I would lie in the grass for hours, watching the clouds and their ever-changing patterns to see what images I could find in each collection of vapor that passed by. It is still something I love to do, but sadly I don’t get to do it very often anymore.
Recently I have begun to notice patterns in the snow, especially the patterns created as that snow clings desperately to the bark of the trees. The position of the snow and the melted remnants of snow around it created what I saw as a panda bear feeding himself.
This is the image I saw this morning. The snow pattern on the left made me think of Santa Claus. It wasn’t until I looked more closely adding the image to this post that I saw the face on the right of what may be a youthful member of the chimpanzee family clinging to the tree.
If this was my Rorschach Test, I hope I passed!! Do you see what I did, or do you see something entirely different?
For all intents and purposes, I am a still somewhat of a virgin in the blogging world. I started this journey in August and have been doing my best to stay true to what really means something to me. But as it is in many cases, I felt somewhat lost along the way. I spent a great portion of my time watching the stats on my blog instead of focusing on what was truly important – the honesty and sense of self in the words that I write.
I began this journey because of a deep yearning to free the ideas in my mind, to let loose the writing demon that was trapped in the confines of my cranial matter. I spent my days off this past weekend utterly disconnected from the outside world. I turned off my phone, ignored my television, refrained from playing any music and just lived in the silence. And within that silence, I found my inner voice. I connected with what it was that brought me to the blog world in the first place – the love of writing. I finally allowed myself the chance to be what I desperately yearned to be – a writer. Although there was no looming deadline and no urgency to put ideas on a page, I fervently followed a passion that has recently been rekindled. I conceded to the power of the words so desperately trying to form themselves into ideas and let them paint the landscapes of my prose.
For me, watching the stats on my blog almost made me forget why I began this journey in the first place. I don’t write for anybody other than myself. That may sound like an extremely selfish statement, but it is based in pure truth. I write because I want to, not because I feel pressured to write. The fact that other people enjoy what I write makes me utterly ecstatic and urges me to continue along that path of creativity. Throughout this journey I have met a great many people who not only share the same passion, but who are becoming friends in the process. They are people who have found a forum to let their inner voices escape and meet in a place where they are not only accepted, but adored and applauded.
Losing sight of what is important to me may have momentarily altered my bigger picture, but spending a day listening to the writer in me brought me back to reality. It refocused my yearning to write, if for nothing else, than to put words to a page and to connect with others who can translate my voice into their own words.
I had the rare opportunity to regain my vision and recapture what holds a true place in my heart. My writing is my passion and I will never lose sight of that again. The otters in the video below remind me that it is not about the people who are watching, it really is about getting back to the things that are truly important to us and forgetting what is happening in the world around us. It is holding true to the things we value the most.
polysyllabic profundities 