It’s Been A Long Road ...

Rod Stewart got it right when he used that as his opening line for his song “Faith of the Heart.” It has definitely been a long road getting from there to here. And I don’t just mean the unintentional three week break I took after my last post.

Normally I use the beginning of a new year to shake up things on my blogs, take a look at what’s working and what’s not, and reorganize things to my satisfaction. And I kept meaning to do that here, but ... this year I’m finding myself with less free time during the week and the weekends just aren’t big enough for all the things I want/need to accomplish. I have ideas, but I haven’t had a chance to implement them yet.

This blog did really well last year (by my standards) and I’d like to keep up the good work but that doesn't mean it couldn't use some shaking up.

One of the things I’d like to change is the whole quotes post. On the one hand, Jamie and I go to a lot of trouble looking up quotes for each other and it’d be a shame to waste them. But on the other hand, when you’re quoting about something so specific there’s really not a lot of room for interpretation, so the whole little lesson/lecture thing gets repetitive.

Something I’d like to see added is a little more poetry and maybe some flash fiction. The problem with these, however, is that I don’t want to fall into the trap of being forced to do them on a weekly basis. Been there, done that, it wasn’t pretty.

I had a poetry blog at one time where I was introducing a new form each week and writing an original example. It got really old, really fast, sucking the love of poetry out of me as it became more of a chore than an expression of thoughts and feelings. Same thing happened with the flash fiction - forcing myself to come up with a story each week sucked all the fun out of it. So this is something I'm still thinking about.

And the writing reports? Yeah, they need to be revamped as well. I use an awful lot of words to basically say either the writing went well or I suck each week. :-)

Unfortunately, these things take time to figure out, as does figuring out the direction I want my writing to take.

Then last week I was down for the count with a severe bout of viral gastroenteritis (stomach flu). One of the few benefits of this (other than allowing me to curl up in the recliner, guilt-free, basically doing nothing all day) is it gave me plenty of time to think, to sort out where I’m going and maybe how to get there. I wouldn’t say I had any great epiphany or anything, but I think I have a clearer sense of the direction I’d like to be headed.

Sometimes we just get so much in front of us we can’t see the forest for the trees and we get overwhelmed. I know I sure do. When this happens it helps to pick one direction - maybe an unexpected one - and see where it goes. Trust in yourself.

Maybe that’s all it takes - a little faith of the heart.