Can I Have A Do-Over?

( My Mom's Front Yard Where I Grew Up)

My post yesterday suggested that my very first post would have been something different if things had gone more smoothly in the construction of my blog. Today I thought about trying to create what would have been my perfect first post but I’ve changed my mind. In retrospect, maybe it was exactly as it should have been. I had to work to get it the way it is. Yes, sometimes I wanted to give up but I didn’t. It was the pushing through the problems and resolving them that made it what it is. And so, the blog has already begun.
A dear friend recently sent me a quote by artist Peter London that in part says “everyone already knows the person they would prefer to be, rather than the person they have come to be,” and “at any single moment could open the next phase of his or her preferred life.” I sent my friend a note back saying that I thought stepping away from what you’ve become is the biggest hurdle. To quote my friend, “I don’t think you have to step away from anything…just add to it. I believe that you always know when to drop the baggage.”
I don’t believe we get “do-overs.” I do think however that my friend is very wise. I am at the autumn of my life. That is not a death wish by any means. It is merely that final stage of my life when I will add to what I’ve become by the choices I now make. I’m ready for something new. Right now I have books to read, beaded jewelry to make, photos to take, and this new scrap journaling thing I see so many of you doing. I want to share it all! To quote Peter London one more time, “What I am after as an artist is to see around the bend of my life as I have lived it to date, and catch a glimpse of what may lay ahead. Or above. Or beyond. Or beneath.”