Why am I here?

Full disclosure: mostly for me. But a little for you too.

My selfish reasons: To write. To practice writing. To get my writing edge back. To preen my writing wings. It’s all about getting my creative mojo back after years of mind-squashing editorial work.

Why should you care to read or follow?

That’s truly not my existential question, but I would argue that we have some experiences in common. You don’t have to be a writer or artist to have experienced the forces of that “full-empty” or “everything-nothing” or “got it-don’t got it” paradox.

  • Ideas flourish in your head. Great lines, Fabulous projects. Exhilarating stories. Then, out of the car, everything unloaded and put away, sitting at the keyboard, the shards of your thoughts are stuck in the darkest corner of your brain and you’re paralyzed before that blank screen or what canvas.
  • You feel tired, sleepy. The cobwebs pull on your brain at work, your eyelids droop like thick velvet curtains at the dinner table. When you finally crawl into your bed to nest in the cobwebs and velvety sleep, awake!
  • You’re having a disagreement with a colleague or with your partner. You nail it! You explain calmly the merits of your position. Sometimes you rather nastily point out the holes in his or her arguments. But you nail it every time. You win! In your head. Then the face to face moment comes and fragments of your clever explanation manage to surface, but become jumbled with nonsense (anger, fear, and yes, some poor-pitiful-me whining along with all the things you promised yourself not to say). In the end no one wins.

I’ll explore some of the many brain vs. world/stop-go moments in detail from time to time. You might find your own moment described.

Finally, who am I?

That is arguably the most important and overreaching existential question. It encompasses, what is my purpose?, what is the meaning of (my) life? what . . . ? and why . . . ? and whine and whine.

I’ll keep the whining to a minimum and focus on my hats.

We all wear many hats, and I’ve stood at the edge of this blog for quite a while because I couldn’t decide which hat to wear. I’ve chosen to jump off the edge with my whole closet of hats. I’ll write about things that are close to me, that puzzle me, that are important to me. Some of my hats and interests (in no particular order) that you’ll read about here:

  • parent
  • gardener
  • writer
  • jewelry maker and chain mailler
  • daughter
  • partner
  • canner
  • cook
  • DIY home and beauty products maker (we need a word for this!)
  • friend
  • peace-maker
  • mosaic maker

I hope you’ll join me on a path where many of these hats and interests will intersect, and where many of us will find that we are connected in ways we didn’t predict.

Today I add a new hat. I am blogger.

Vitoria, Spain

circa 1967, Spain

Copyright © 2015 by Pennie Nichols, All Rights Reserved.