Life stories naturally involve other people, so other people appear in many of the entries. To protect certain identities, names and/or dates and/or places in some blog entries are changed from the actual.
What is the purpose of this blog?
Probably the main purpose has been and still is - to provide a venue to give voice.
Within that, I have an avalanche of feelings and doubts and thoughts.
What other possible purposes might this blog have?
...to practice writing,
...to step out of my comfort zone,
...to grow in my ability to communicate more clearly,
...to learn who I am and have a record of how I evolve,
...to become more comfortable in my own skin,
...to continue to discover.
Maybe I'll grow in my ability to express and to embrace authenticity. If so, then perhaps some folks who come across this blog are inspired in like manner.
I hope to never veer onto a path where the purpose becomes to impress.
Thanks for visiting toss & ripple...
~*~
significance beneath my sandal
(penned march 31, 2007)
one grain of rock
trampled under
crushed beneath
my sandal
no thought given
to its suffering
for it is
but gravel
yet this pebble
tossed on water
rippled pond
life aroused
one day trampled
no thought given
form concealed
underground
another day
tossed to freedom
bobbing shapes
round and round
20 comments:
Blogs should be me centric. I think that is totally okay myself.
I like embracing authenticity, it's so easy to be what we want people to see.
Lovely poem.
I love your title.
I think I stopped blogging because it was all about me and I felt somehow that was a bad thing? I don't know. I do know that I've almost started again but always stop myself. Perhaps sensing I haven't got the ability anymore. Tired and the pain, so heightened right now.
I think the things you express here Carol are right on target. A blog is a very personal light into the writer's thoughts, feelings, ideas, and yes, pains...as well as joys...just as your beautiful poem is. I have found that letting those pent up feelings out in public is cathartic and anyone who doesn't like it certainly doesn't have to read it. Keep on keeping on and don't ever let the light burn out. Everyone is me-centric whether they admit it or not. :)
Well I feel better. :-) Anna Maria you are a good cheerleader.
Speaking for myself, I was taught that me-centric was a bad thing. A selfish thing. I wrestle with it everyday. I'm burned out because in my life off-line I wasn't me-centric enough.
With age I'm waking up but it feels too late. I've given a shit about people who never gave a shit about me. I thought giving a shit would change the world . . . ha.
I think I just "pented." New word. :-)
Thanks Alice!
I still struggle with authenticity. Sometimes I know myself and am able to be; other times I seem to be a stranger and want to flee. Sometimes I hide.
Hmm...As long as I am aware of myself at the time I am in those feelings/behaviors (ie: knowing, being, strangering, hiding) I am still authentic if I recognize where I am at the moment. I drift into non-authenticity when I lie to myself or pretend. At those times I feel less grounded.
Barrel of thoughts....
Oh good...on the title. Thanks!
I've thought about updating "about this blog" for months. I'm in a different place now than I was in 2009, but I don't want to discard the original piece of where I was in 2009....so I decide on a number two. If I continue blogging, there may be a three and four and five.
I have thought so many times about quitting. I mean, what would I have done before the internet? *chuckle*
I get into funks as I start comparing myself to others. Too often I give more validity to others' opinions than to my own. And then I think, "that's selfish too Carol...to think your less than." Gawd..I'm selfish if I write my words and express my opinions and I'm selfish if I doubt my words. lol What a gremlin. Yet, I still do much better than I used to with that menacing gremlin..
So sorry about the pain and tiredness. Gentle hugs your way... ((( hugs )))
PS: I'm working on a second "A Bit About Me" two.
"...anyone who doesn't like it certainly doesn't have to read it..."
That's one reason I started a blog as opposed to continuing on forums. A blog is my little turf, so to speak.
I still too often fall into, "What will 'Jane' or 'Roy' or 'whoever' think of me if I put this out in public?" I think some of that caring too much about what others think goes back to my unhealthy self-doubt...and some of it is simply being human and wanting to be accepted.
Yet, I love it when people share their lives...their inner thoughts and experiences. I don't think ill of others who share their stories...even if those stories would be about me. Others stories mostly inspire and grow me. (Like you and Alice and Zoe and Bruce and others.) Even though it is me-centric...it's also us-centric (us being humanity)... Life is a series of stories.
Thank you Anna! <3
Zoe..."pented"..good new word! I invent new words regularly. ;)
I've been thinking lately about the "it's too late." I was looking at going to college. I doubt I will, unless maybe...just maybe...I can take one class at a time. Maybe I can earn my doctorate when I'm 80! lol
Can a person be both authentic and cautious? Sometimes I think the drive for authenticity gets muddled with thinking we have to empty our truth out completely and that if we don't we're somehow inauthentic. Maybe I'm thinking of being authentic differently than others. I'd like to think that I am authentic but I don't think it necessarily means taking a "tell all" approach. Is that what we mean by being authentic?
Zoe reclines on the therapist's couch and waits for the answer. :-)
Zoe...I do think a person can be both authentic and cautious. After 70 years of keeping a lot of crap bottled up that depressed me, I let it all out when I wrote my memoir, and though some of those I wrote about didn't appreciate it...I still don't regret it. It was my life and if they caused me pain and sorrow, I don't feel that revealing it to the world caused them near as much as I and others had suffered for their screw-ups. :)
Well I don't think it's ever too late to do whatever you feel like doing. As I wrote in the book...if I ever win the lottery I plan to raise racehorses and hopefully a Kentucky Derby contender. Why not? Just because someone might not approve? I never let that stop me before and don't intend to at any age. Start those classes Carol!
I think if I wrote a book about screw-ups I'd just end up throwing myself into the ring and get the same thrown back in my face.
My mother said to me recently, "And maybe you'll start writing again?" I said to her, "I'll wait until everyone is dead." Eeegaads! I said that. You know, I always thought that when certain people were gone and my words couldn't hurt them I'd write it, a book. But now I see my children living their lives, grandchildren coming into the world and I think to myself, 'Why mess up their lives?'
If you don't mind me asking Anna Maria, what was your age when you wrote/published your book?
Zoe...I started the memoir after my Mother's excruciating death from Alzheimer's in 2001, depressed to the gills about how my siblings had treated her. I had no idea what I was going to write when I started but as it ended up, it was my whole life from my earliest memory right up to the present...good and bad alike. I worked on it for years before I tried to get it published, that happened in 2011 when I was 73. As I stated in the beginning, if anyone didn't like what I wrote they certainly had the right to publish their own version. So far no one has. I stopped worrying about what anyone else thought in 2001. :)
Thank you for sharing Anna Maria. I wonder if with age we can stop worrying easier? That somehow we become less inhibited?
My maternal grandfather had Alzheimer's though he maintained an exquisite long-term memory and lived to be 100. Mom shows signs but she thinks I show signs and thinks it will skip a generation so that I'm the one that will have it. I worry that she might be right.
Off topic but I think I told you I'd let you know when I started reading Wild. She's just starting her hike, the weight, the incline, it's all getting to her. For me knowing she did it and what seems to me to be the impossibility of it all, it's fascinating. I already have determined there's no way I could do it and that's with her having just begun. :-)
I do think the older I got the less inhibited I became as for as revealing how I felt about certain things. Mom's doctor told the four of us that likely one of us would get Alzheimer's so I try to keep my brain active...whether that will help or not, I don't know. One brother has died from colon cancer and I haven't spoken to my other two siblings since Mom's funeral. I really have nothing left to say to them...I said it all in 323 pages for all the world to ponder. Don't worry about it Zoe...live life to the fullest while you are able. That is what I am doing. I just became a great-grandmother and the kids and grandkids are the most important things in my life.
Well..sheesh... I just typed a response and it way the way of the dinosaur...
Here goes again...
Glad you are getting around to read it. I found it fascinating and I like how Cheryl intertwines other parts of her life story with the trail trek.
I don't recall if you and/or I mentioned anything about Cheryl's estranged half-sister discovering the Cheryl was her half-sister as the estranged sister was reading *Wild*.
"..."Back in late June or early July I was reading one such email ... and I was just about to move onto the next email when the woman who was emailing me said that we really were connected, that, in fact, we have the same father," Strayed tells NPR's Rachel Martin..."
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/08/219754257/the-wild-story-of-cheryl-strayed-and-her-long-lost-half-sister?ft=1&f=1032&sc=tw&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
That'd be one shocking email.
Geeze...my typos. Sorry about that, but I think you get the message.
I'll call them "fatigue typos"...
Thank you Anna! <3
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