The sun sets on a decade of blog posts — The Zone and The Pivot …
Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Welcome to The Success Zone, an eclectic place for your personal success! I’m glad you’re here where each week…
With Emerson’s quote and my words of welcome this blog journey began 520 weeks ago, August 15, 2013. A decade of blog posts! A bit of celebration and reflection seems apropos for this milestone.
Little did I know that I would maintain the practice for a decade, keeping a weekly commitment to my, as a friend says, “date with creation”. A time each week to listen not to the mainstream but rather to the mainstays of Life: Nature, Spirit, My Heart. A time to ask, ‘what wants to be shared this day?’
A decade, 520 weeks, of The Zone and our pivot to The Pivot in 2020 because as I said then, ‘a new story requires us to change’. Life has been a ride these 10 years for each of us!
Looking back, I’m grateful for rarely needing to push myself. Most weeks I’m excited to discover where the journey will lead. Some weeks I have a rough idea of the focus either because of an event in my life that I’m musing about, or something that has grabbed my attention seems worthy of sharing.
Days when I’m empty, clueless about the focus, yield surprises as I’m guided to open just the right book or Muse taps me on the shoulder, gently suggesting ‘This!’. Posts that come slowly or require more effort put me face to face with uncertainty and doubt. It’s often those posts that garner the most responses from you, dear readers, suggesting that we are often grappling with similar challenges each uniquely designed to our life path. I am grateful to each of you for allowing me to pop into your life each week and for reading and sharing your thoughts!
I feel a deep sense of gratitude for and satisfaction with reaching this milestone, although it was never a goal. Early on my purpose was to share ideas and strategies for personal success and to support building my coaching business. I enrolled in courses promising to teach me how to write the ‘great blog’ and to ‘grow my list’. Rarely, if ever, did the content or ideas resonate with me. ‘Emerson didn’t need a marketing expert to share his wisdom,’ I would sometimes grumble.
Spirit seemed to have another purpose. The goal, if any, became to simply show up with curiosity and care, listen, write, and share. That intention holds today.
We’ve all been through a lot since August, 2013. I’ll spare you the history and share just a few highlights in my life.
Just as I began to prepare to launch The Zone, my computer crashed, and my landlord informed me that he was going to sell the house I’d been happily renting for several years. Somehow those potential setbacks didn’t delay the launch. And I kept my weekly date through some tumultuous time on the local water board, buying a home, and operating a bed and breakfast along with my coaching practice.
Shortly after posting #311 on August 1, 2019, Cool Hand Luke let me know that it was his time to cross the rainbow bridge. Post #335 was done on Zadie Byrd’s first full day here in her new, ‘furever’ home. Covid came on the scene a month or so later, and The Zone became The Pivot with issue #349. As I was completing post #360 on July 8, 2020, I received the call that my dear cousin had attempted suicide and was, at that time, ‘unresponsive’. After a three-day journey across five states during ‘lockdown’, Zadie Byrd’s first road trip, posts for the next six weeks were written in Washington state where I was handling her estate.
I share these events not to brag, but rather to deepen my own understanding and acceptance of the satisfaction that grows from consistency and commitment. And from the willingness to follow my path, my heart. I’m a bit awestruck by its depth. And I’m most grateful!
Each of us has been committed to something (multiple somethings for most!). We are committed to something today. Let’s each be sure that our commitments are to that which is life generating, life enhancing. To mainstays, not the mainstream. To coherence and peace, not tumult and chaos. To courage and love, not fear. To the truth of our Oneness, not the divisiveness of separation.
This felt sense of satisfaction does not mean that my weekly commitment is complete. The weekly journey continues with a renewed commitment to speak from my heart as I question the status quo, travel my own journey to life more fully aligned with Mother Earth, and live in the wonder that is this life in crazy, tumultuous times of uncertainty and change.
For how long, I cannot say. I’m clear that I will know when ‘I’m done.’ For now, eclectic musing, sometimes contradictory, will continue. The words will by MY words, not words from someone’s artificial intelligence program. And that’s a story for another day…
Although the sun is setting on a decade of posts, this morning’s encounter with bunny in the grass, points to fertile ground for future explorations.
Today’s morning encounter with bunny suggests fertile ground for future explorations. Onward!