Sep 09 2007
A Year In the Life
A year ago today I wrote my About page.
My first post was my definition of love.
Funny how life works out.
My earlier posts were tentative. I didn’t put too much of me in my posts. Like a new relationship, I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to reveal.
As with any relationship, if I wanted to grow closer, if I wanted to connect, I had to share more about myself.
It’s been a bit of a balancing act to both maintain my privacy and reveal enough of who I am that you feel that you know me.
My blog is not only a relationship with you, my readers but also a relationship with myself.
I began this blog as a way to connect to my passion for writing. I’d like to think that I’ve grown into my writing.
Writing has changed me. Writing for you has changed me.
This past year I have journeyed not only across the world but also into uncharted emotional territory.
It has not been an easy journey.
My first post was about love.
I’ve written about so many other things since then.
A year later and I’ve worked my way back to love. I don’t believe in coincidences.
I thought writing was my purpose. It certainly is a passion. Yet as I continue on my journey I’m wondering if writing is merely a tool for my purpose.
I believe we all desire to experience love: We all desire to freely give and receive love.
Freely give and receive love: no fear, no attachment, and no price to pay.
Free.
What kind of world do we live in that so many people do not believe that they deserve love?
How many of us reject that we are whole, complete and perfect?
How many of us hate ourselves?
Our true self, our soul, knows it is whole, complete and perfect. That’s why we cry when we hear those words. Or that’s why we want to cry.
I believe the world would be a better place if we all had healthy self-love.
Imagine that world. Imagine a world of love.
It’s beautiful.
I want to be a part of creating that world.
An anniversary gift from me to you…the sultry tones (yeah…right) of Ms. Q:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
That is SO NEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And since the microphone is a piece of crap…did you get it from my son’s school catalog?!?!?!?!?
I’m not currently having any problems with male erectile dysfunction but you’ll be the first to know if I do!
Count me for a yes vote! (I almost didn’t click on it, because I didn’t know what it was!)
You want to be a part of that world? I think you already are. As you’ve come full circle in your blogging you’ve reached and touched a lot of people, a new audience.
You’re on track.
During a conversation I had with a friend of mine the other day the question was asked, “How do you change the world if you’re only one man with one voice?” I replied, “One conversation at a time.”
With your blog you’ve been having that conversation with your fellow bloggers and readers.
Congratulations on the one year. I look forward to what the second year brings.
Wow… You made a pod cast. I didn’t comment on it in my previous comment because I thought it was an ad, go figure.
I enjoyed hearing your voice. You sound close to what I thought you would sound like. We have a few ABC’s in my office so I expected you to sound like them. Not trying to stereotype but that is how my mind works sometimes.
Hearing more podcasts in the future would be great. I listened to the previous one, the meditation.
My question to you Ms. Q: How can you love someone you don’t know? I found myself asking that question after a five year relationship with someone. I didn’t understand how they can tell me the love me all the time yet come to me and say that they don’t know me.
Ms.Q
If you figure out how to make everyone feel whole and loved would you let me know? Every time I think I make some progress, I find myself hating me and others - usually my family…
remember john lennon—just imagine—–everything is possible, if that is your intention.
imagine your life as a piece as a piece of clay–now how creative can you be from this moment on.
i enjoyed some of the pieces on your blog–S.A. IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE,
i am lucky enough to have it with me every day
take care on your journey
derick
Jill: Glad you think it’s neat. No, I didn’t get the mike from your son’s school catalog. From what you showed, it’s probably not crappy enough
Yeah, I did the stealth mode when it came to the podcast just to see what would happen … I wanted to see if any of youse guys were paying attention. Hehehe.
But I changed the post to make it more obvious! You obviously listened to the entire thing. Glad you don’t have any MED!! Glad you clicked.
UT: Thanks for your thoughts. I do feel that I am a part of this beautiful world and I sense that with everything I’ve been reading (”The Secret”, LoA) everyone is gaining a higher overall awareness of “The Big Picture.” In some ways it’s been “good business” as books, DVDs, CDs, seminars, etc. make money on spirituality and while at the surface it seems counter to what we all think of as spirituality, it’s actually in keeping with the concept of wealth - that is, total well-being. I keep having to remind myself that all those people getting rich doesn’t take money out of my pocket and in fact, many of the businesses out there who are successful have a policy to give back and they don’t necessarily advertise the fact.
Glad you enjoyed my voice. Yes, I do have an “ABC” voice. It’s its own type of accent. I recognize it but it’s a bit subtle and hard to describe. Most people don’t think I have an accent (which eliminates my being from certain parts of the country). I don’t think about it consciously but I do imagine what you, Jill, Ricardo and my regular readers and commenters sound like! I think of you having a (stereotype, I know!) smooth, low voice, perhaps with a melodic vibe to it, crisp, clear words, no muttering. Jill - sometimes “Valley Girl” (sorry, Jill) comes to mind but that’s only because of her punctuation. Not quite sure. She “sounds” mid-higher range with a running-across-the-lawn type of speech pattern: bouncing, happy. Can’t hear any accent.
At first I was going to answer your question here and then I thought - oh, yeah! I should answer it in a podcast!
Beth: The thing is you can’t make anyone else feel whole and loved. I am not an expert (not sure if there is such a thing but what a thing to strive for) on love but I’ve read a lot of books on love and relationships. That’s my disclaimer
When it comes to you, me, everyone else, we all create our reality. That’s our base, our starting point. A couple of belief systems like Subjective Reality and the Hawaiian healing process called ho ‘oponopono state that all that we do as individuals, what we do with our lives, affects everyone because we created it. I’ll try to figure out how to explain it more deeply in a podcast but the simple answer is this:
Heal yourself and you are creating an world where others are healed.The more I practice this, the more I see it happening. So when you begin to change from feeling good about yourself and then begin to feel badly about yourself because you became irritated and were rude to someone, don’t let that bad feeling continue. You are still whole, complete and perfect. Which means that your dark side (being irritated) is a part of you. The look at the irritation, take a step back and ponder, What In ME is wounded? Heal that wound and you heal the other person.
derick: Hey! Thanks for visiting! “Imagine” is such a beautiful song. I can’t quite tell from your comment if you hold South Africa in your heart or if you live there or both! Yes, S.A. is beautiful. I’ll return, again and again.
It’ll be a year for me next week. My first post included two random links I got from the Blogger “next” button and a picture of my doggie saying Happy New Year in Hebrew. I guess some of us knew more than others where they were going with their blog. I still have no idea what I’m doing but I’m having a good time doing it. Congratulations.
A world full of self-love would be a beautiful thing indeed.
I started my blog just over a year ago mainly to help keep me on track to continue writing. I still haven’t managed what I consider a favorable balance between personal and private, but I’m getting there.
I got here from Meleah’s blog and I am glad I found you. I’ll be back
Self love is one of the hardest things for people to understand they need to embrace, and I am no different. In fact the whole midlife thing has made it seem much further away than it once was. But I’m getting better
Hi Ms. Q,
Congratulations for your first full year of blogging! You stuck with it, and now over time you’ve slowly developed your own voice, and the realm of subject matter that you feel is worth dedicating much of your time towards. I like your voice. I have a feeling you like it too, which of course is a great sign of healthy self-esteem.
Blogging or talking about the love and acceptance of our ’self’ is delving into an area that humanity presently has a lot of weakness and insecurity about. Exploring the inner-self to find peace is a very hard but worthwhile journey (What other journey is as important?), so having any individual people devoting their time to helping others towards this altruistic goal is admirable, and in my opinion, couragous.
We only live once in this body. Why not search and work towards attaining the lifestyle and inner-love that we all deep-down must aim for? Somebody fairly cool once said that we couldn’t love others until we truly loved ourselves. If this is even partly true, then it’s no wonder that there’s so much strife in the world today. Still, if we open our eyes, we can always find someone around the corner (street, or Blogospheric avenue) who is doing their best to have a positive impact on the world around them.
It’s hard for me to accept my faults and weaknesses. I only hope that this internal struggle (for me, it’s a boxing match in my own mind/soul) doesn’t affect my relationships with the ones I have come to love the most.
Keep on writing and speaking and helping and loving and living,
Jesse
Hey, Jesse: Thanks! When I first read your comment I thought of “voice” as the manner in which I express myself in my writing. Then I realized that you could also (and were probably) commenting on liking my actual voice. When I’m in blog mode my brain things “writing” and not “speaking.”
Yes, I do like my voice! I can’t really see how people would not like their voice but like our bodies, we all have an “ideal” whatever that is. Radio announcers seldom match the image we created based on their voice. I am told that I “match” my voice.
I’ve been researching quite a bit about love and self love. Some may consider it narcissistic but the more I read about self love the more I am seeing the spiritual connection between love of self and being able to love others. Love is truly powerful and as I scribble notes with arrows leading to other ideas it seems that if you work from love and begin with self, you then work/live with joy and from joy you are creativity and imagination and what is creativity but the ability to see possibilities?
When you see possibilities you enlarge your world and what is that but freedom? When we look at life as “just this” isn’t that a prison of our minds?
When you work from joy, inner joy, you don’t have to see it from others and when this happens you learn to accept others for who they are and love them. They don’t have to be anything other than they are, some mirror of or for you.
I struggle with the concept that I am whole, perfect and complete. I keep saying it but then I think, “Oh, but I have to change this…” and then I remind myself that I have polarity - I can love and I can hate, I am shadow and I am light. Without the shadow, you would not see my light. We need both, one to balance the other.
I believe it’s the Buddhist perspective that doesn’t judge one thing good or bad or “It is what it is” it’s our mind that interprets.
When it comes to our relationships, I feel that if we work from love, things will work out however they do for the best.
I still run the internet through a dial up line, so your old “crappy” microphone is high tech to me. First of all, waiting for your podcast to load was well worth it. Don’t take this the wrong way, as your skills definately lie in writting, but you have a voice that SHOULD be broadcast. Sultry…yes. I could see you as a popular radio talk personality.
Congratulations on you first year. I’m really glad to have found your positive and open blog. Yours is a truly unique blend of opinion, advice, and self examinaton. I have really become a fan.
I hope I never need to ask about E.D. This was an oddly funny addition, although probably not very funny to have…did I just write that? Sheeesh!!
See you soon MsQ, your blogging friend, Eric
Eric! Speedcat! … You’re still on dialup?? Dang. My photos must drive you nuts with how long they would take to load and how do you deal with uploading all your images? Well, you do have very tiny and low-res images so maybe that’s why.
I may take a photo of my crappy mike just so everyone can see how M.Mouse it is. But..it works. I tend to use things that work until they fall apart or become so annoying to use (like dialup!) that it’s affecting my quality of life.
Well, I am glad that you believe my skills are more with my writing than with my voice since that IS my focus and passion. Doing the recording was a bit of work and I haven’t learned how to use the Audacity software with regard to editing recordings and all that.
Why should I take it the wrong way that I should be broadcasting? I takes that as a compliment!! I’m glad you thought downloading the podcast was worthwhile.
Sultry? Glad you think so. So when I talk about loooove maybe it’ll make people listen. Although they might have something else in mind when I say, “Feel the love.”
I’m glad you enjoy my blog so much! That is so nice to read. I like seeing what’s up on your blog it is so whacky! You post so many odd things sometimes it seems several times a day and so much about golfing that I wonder if you’ve retired, living off your investment income and golfing all day. But if this were the case, I’d think you’d spend a few extra bucks on DSL. Or maybe that’s how you got rich.
I hope you never ask me about M.E.D. either. It was the first thing that popped into my head - visions of those silly early morning and late night cable commercials I’d see while on the road. Plus, I wanted something out of left field. May you never have any problems in that…area. Or anywhere else.
It was definitely interesting listening to this. I didn’t exactly know what to make of it, since it’s rather strange to hear someone after only reading them. I suppose that it’d be very similar to hearing the voice of an author of a book. Strange, indeed.
In any case, congratulations on blogging for that long!
I like Audacity, but you were probably referencing how ghetto the microphone was (and not the software). I’m currently using it to digitize a vinyl record collection.
Derek: So..do I sound “ABC” to you? I sound very ABC to myself but that’s me. Aren’t you an ABC as well? I thought my voice might not be that much of a surprise to those who have been around American Born Chinese.
Thanks for the congrats! No…questions for me?
I only have 2 questions so far so I’m wondering about the doing more podcasts bit.
The software I’m recording with is called Audacity. When I first considered podcasting I googled around and everyone recommended it. I know I am not using it anywhere near it’s capacity. My mom said that I should add background music!
Has it really been a year? Hard to believe just how many new people you have met by blogging eh?
All of us grow as bloggers, even me. I’be been blogging for a little bit over a year now and my blog has been all over the place. Your blog, however, has always had a strong thread guiding it.
HMTKSteve: Yeah, I’ve met an amazing amount of fellow bloggers! Of course, I had to stop lurking in order to do that, which took me a coupla months! I felt like a shy woodland creature.
Yeah, you blog all over the place and now have blogs all over the place! So far, I only have this one. I have some ideas about what’s next though.
Lovely MsQ. Lovely. The sounds, the sights in the picture, the thoughts shared in the blog post. All of it was a delight for the senses.
The deserving of love thing is difficult for many but keep this message going. It’s one that is not comon in blog land and your thoughts on it are a pleasure to read.
Ricardo: Thank you! We should all be in love with ourselves. I’ve been doing the affirmations and it’s becoming easier to feel and believe in them. I know it’s changing my life. I see so many people looking for their value in other people.
People do look for self worth in others and it’s preached to us in films, writing TV and bad love songs. That is not love but it is being codependent
Ricardo: Most people who know what codependent means have learned it the hard way. I know I did. Hope this wasn’t the case for you.
Thank goodness for India Arie! She sings the Self-Love songs!