(REVISED) – Sunday – 20/29/23
Dear Friends….
So, yesterday my best friend, the love of my life, and the one person who I totally trust, reminded me about this post that I created almost one year ago. My intentions were to begin a writing career and see where it would lead me. He believes in me, and he wants to encourage and nurture me to reach my true potential. I must admit, my immediate thought was, well what do I write about. I admit to you now, in this moment, that I have tons of interests and I’ve been practicing without knowing it through this blog, and over the last fifteen years and a number of you have followed me. But choosing my beginning direction seemed overwhelming. Do I write about gardening, do I incorporate my faith journey, should it be about my growing up in a small town, about my family influences, times I spent traveling, my interest in cooking and homemaking, antiques acquisitions, opening my own retail store, starting a neighborhood gardening business, studying music for 20 years, my earnest passion for thrift and charity shops and going to auctions for years acquiring goods. I also love birds, nature and farming, where as a child I spent hours learning about nature, crops, the land, weather, animals and wildlife on the family farm. It’s a broad spectrum of topics to narrow down, and yet I know I’ve stories to tell.
So I will begin in a small town of 38,000, in central Iowa. My thoughts are at this moment convinced that in our life journey, the events large and small, that took place in our lives prepare us and mature us as we grow into adults. I believe it is absolutely no accident what we think, who we meet, where we go, and how we ultimately end up at a place, where we can say we have lived a full and interesting life. And those who have shared that life with us, have a profound affect on our thinking and our path into the later years of our life. Everyone brings to us, experiences and decisions, and joys and sorrows and we become the person we were meant to be with our creators fervent interest in us. For I know that as humans, God has created us in his image. We have responsibilities, and we need to live up to our true potential, and in so doing, bring richness to our lives, and the lives of all others, including those we love deeply. And so I will begin in my hometown and start my story there.
I will use this platform to write my story. If you decide to follow me, it will be my honor to hear from you and to share my life’s journey with you personally, with the hope that my walk may inspire you to write about your life also. We all have a story to tell. It is of value…..and it is good and crucial to share.
I hope you will follow me on my chosen path….
sincerely,
” Contessa”
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Hello ContessasHome Friends…
After blogging for fourteen years, and writing about gardening, yoga, my store in Delray, daily reflections and my spiritual prayer times, I am led to pursue my newest “calling.” I want to write a book. I have gazillions of thoughts and ideas in my head about things to write about. I have decided to pursue a writing career. My blog is and will remain a continued communication tool, in order to be able to keep in touch with all of you…..my gardening friends.
I have been thinking about writing professionally for about two years. Today I visited the library to find a few books about how to start a career in writing. I will be doing some studying and some writing. I’m not sure where I’m going exactly…but it is all about getting started. Will it be a novel, or a series of short stories, a devotional, poetry or a collection of daily spiritual reflections. I do not know that yet. But “beginning” is where I will start. Creating characters possibly, making characters come to life, inventing a story and a writers style all come in to play. Being a writer will require some solitude, research, writing and rewriting and using the inner resources of my mind to gather all the material I’ve stored in my brain for these last fourteen years while I was blogging. My inner urge to write comes from my creator. I am no accident and neither is my inner urge to write. It’s all part of His plan for me. My best self so to speak. Diving deep into my mind to explore so many things I have learned about my life, my previous careers and just simply about learning. Life long learners are interesting folk. We have lived and grown and shared. This new adventure is a place I’ve not been before. But it’s been planted as a seed in my heart and so I will begin…..and I bring with me, for support and encouragement, my best friend, and the love of my earthly life and my soul mate. [JB/MP]
Tonight I’ve brought four books home with me from the Duncan Library in Delray. All very different. Each focusing on writing……and so now, for a week or so…. I will become a student of others research about writing. I will share with you as I go along in this new and scary, but exciting writing journey.
“Contessa”