See these old magazines? They’ve followed me in bins. Unopened. Until now. My website broke in 2016. And, until now, posting these clips of stories I’d written was something I was “gonna do”.
Close to a thousand BookBlogs lived on that website. About a hundred audio interviews on Open Book with Diana Page Jordan on PDX.AM. And, dozens of podcasts and videos – nearly all of authors.
So, when my website turned from a literary purple to a cat-scratch orange, and when fonts slid over other fonts to make headlines and copy unreadable, you can imagine my horror. It’s been “under construction” for more than three years. Until now.
I get what was going on. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. Not wanting to pull the trigger on a project you would dearly love. Why not? Irrational, right?
I now see – for me – it was that I did not want to close a chapter. A stunningly wonderful chapter of love and light, of interviewing authors for a half-dozen national publications, websites, and networks. These were mostly transformational authors, so not only was I getting their name out into the world, I was also taking in their work, so I could learn and heal.
I’m clearly in a new chapter now. A graduate of that time. And, here to step into what I came to do.
To, in a word: Inspire. It can sound lofty, I know. I mean “inspire” in the most gentle of ways. If what I write and say – and if my coaching and guidance – can lift you to a place where you want to be – that is precisely what my new chapter is about.
When a chapter closes, then, I choose to not weep over the loss, but to see each chapter with a non-critical eye.
This is an adventure – and without the roller-coaster lows, there would be no highs. Without breakdowns, there can be no breakthroughs. It is all in how we look at the chapters in our lives. I am grateful for every moment in every chapter.
This new chapter? For the first time, I don’t have one foot on the gas, while the other foot is on the brake. I’m not looking in the rear-view mirror. I do, however, have a lifetime of accumulated experience, knowledge, even wisdom. And, I’ve got my foot on the gas.
