I find a parallel in the way my thoughts float and my inability to be organized in a traditional sense.

I’m hard on myself when it comes to writing…trying to fit myself in to a cookie cutter approach of what this blog should be like. The same is true for my business approach. I tell myself that I need a list. I want to be traditionally organized with my MSSoftServe and my other professional career goals, to be categorized and arranged just so. I tell myself it is the key to being…to feeling less overwhelmed.

If only my goals were compartmentalized – lists that I can then cross off – I could sleep at night if everything I need to do on a stable unwavering list. Yet something prevents me from doing that. My inside voice keeps chanting: Do this… make a list. Keep all of your ideas in this one little book, or this one file. This new way will make everything simple. Yet something blocks me from the brilliant solution I’ve just designed. My process can’t be squeezed into structure. Why can’t I just get back to the flow?

Flow – the passage of time that occurs when the process pulls me along without temporal thoughts. I’m writing and I’m not paying attention to the specifics of the keyboard or what my next sentence will be. No need to edit –that will happen between stops while my brain is deliriously protected from itself.

As I get off the train into the cold night air the papers of my mind become stacked and land in my hand, the one not holding my stick, and I hear the content without reading. Telling me, in a certain voice just what I need to write about. It’s always been there and by letting it float on its own time, I will just have to write it down. The inner talking, the telling, the reading…Embrace it. My way, my flow, my unclogged brain and I impatiently remind myself, Just hit submit already!

After days of a Woody Allen style self-deprecating inner dialogue I’ve found this:

Ideas have been flying through my head like papers in the wind.  They surface in the delirious sleep laden moments punctuated by the announcements leading up to my stop. Glen Ridge… we are now arriving at Glen Ridge (foot-drop, boots with deeper tread.. walking stick stabilizing- if my foot drops) Bay Street, next stop Bay Street  ( unexpected and consistent, foot-drop – this is why some of us can’t walk at all, will it be my ambulatory demise?, NO… stop thinking that!) Walnut Street, we are now arriving at Walnut street...( foot-drop with my stick, walking stick perception, can you see my empowered state? stick: reunion.)  Watchung Avenue (wake up,next stop, 20 year update, stick: weak, pathetic) We are now arriving…  ( I’m not there yet!)

I find myself repeatedly surprised when I examine the process that brings me to any realization. I know hindsight is 20/20, but somehow when I’m going through the backtracking of how I came to the point of success, it includes a period of self-flagellation, though maybe that’s just a required part of that process.

I put a lot of pressure on myself to write regularly. When first learning about blogs and struggling with the idea of how I might create one, Keith impressed upon me that I should write regularly, daily if possible. It is a must if you hope to keep a readership tantalized, interested enough to keep coming back, he explained. If you don’t, then they will ultimately stop checking. So I took it to heart. It became my inner proctor, slapping the ruler for every day that went by without an entry.

I’ve written here about my struggle, finding my blog voice, my rhythm over the year + since I began posting. I know that I want to write well-thought-out meaningful interpretations instead of immediate emotional responses (not that there is anything wrong with those…☺). For me the more prolonged processing during the construct stage of writing- ie. considering for days, sometimes weeks- is more satisfying in the end. It’s more therapeutic, during the writing, the editing and ultimately the reflection in the months that follow. It’s something meatier to chew on, says the vegetarian! ☺  But in spite of this understanding of my style, and the fact, the irregular posting continues to serve as an example of what I’ve failed to accomplish on my Things To Do list.

… more to come

On the start of this new year the word perspective floats in my mind, bumping like a pinball off the multiple scars and resonating on memories nestled in my neurological archives. We are programmed to consider what was and what will be at this time of the year.  So I question; Am I a different person leaving 2008 than I was when I got here? Fundamentally no.

I’ve always been surprised at the ongoing realization that I am intrinsically the same person that I was on the first day of Kindergarten. Although my inputs have changed, I continue to process the information using the same hardware… perhaps with a few upgrades to my operating system and increased memory. I reflect, consider and over-evaluate just as I did when I left home for Mrs. Hamilton’s morning class at Washington Elementary School.  And while MS has kept me from reasonable upgrades in RAM, I work with what I have and reinvent the how-to of life in creative ways.  It is this process helps me to avoid the lethargy of my overextended hard drive.

And so, here I sit with that perspective.

The place that it takes me is one of reflection- that of New Year’s Eves past that mark the decades. Moving from the 80s and 90s into the four-digit years with more than the Y2K fears that most were preoccupied with. What was monumental at that time is silly in retrospect. The more dramatic events of those two decades in my individual experience I’ve shelved as something that shaped my character and helped me to evolve in ways that I wouldn’t have otherwise known.  Traversing these decades with a remarkable speed disguised by an uncertain step.

Its funny how perspective prior to writing this entry had me up at 3:30am wondering how we will afford the life we lead and how will I achieve the goals I’ve set before me.

I enter 2009 looking for an external hard drive, an arm to hang on. One that will not only help me to operate with confidence, but will also stabilize my emotional fortitude to live through the challenges that lay ahead with a tech savvy that I can be proud of. Maybe a little Tetris will distract from the “bugs” waking me in the middle of the 364 nights to come .

Lets see what happens, shall we?

amy g.