Changing Directions

My blog posts have dwindled---for a while I was posting twice a week, or at the minimum once. My mind overflowed with thoughts I needed to write. As ideas came to me, I eagerly jotted them into a little notebook I kept inside my purse.

Ideas still come---but my words have felt stuck. Most of my writing has come from my life experiences---what I learned in past relationships, what I learned as a single woman who remained single when others questioned why, what I learned through battling for a healthy perception of myself, what I learned through fears and dreams and trying to push through obstacles.

But a few months ago, my life took a turn I wasn't expecting. After an almost six-and-a-half year run of being totally single, with no relationships, only a few dates that I forced myself to go on, and a resignation to life without any further attempts at dating...I began a relationship. I started January 2013 with a list of goals and dreams that did not even include the words "man" or "boyfriend." So I still feel that I am in surprising, unfamiliar territory. I am thankful for it, extremely happy with it, but also still adjusting to this new place in my life.

I may still have times I feel the need to write about what I learned during my stages of singleness or from past memories, or how I was changed by those moments when I could barely look at myself in a mirror or photo. But for right now, those topics no longer seem to be naturally flowing out of me.

I am not sure what topics will flow naturally out of me. I extremely value respecting people's privacy and confidentiality, so my blog won't become a play-by-play of dates or commentary on another person; I simply feel that I am looking out of a different lens now, viewing life from another perspective, and "what this girl learns" now is different than what this girl was learning last year. I am challenging some old beliefs, yet relearning other ones.

While no human relationship can fill every void in our lives
and while nothing we experience on earth is guaranteed,
for the time being,
my life has currently entered a stage that is a contrast
to the one I spent the past several years in.

As much as I cringe at vulnerability and transparency
and as desperately as I try to guard myself from castles that fall,
I admit that my life is in a new place right now.
   
So my posts may seem different.

Whether I have two readers or two hundred,
I feel that my words may remain stuck until I explain:
for the present, my life has shifted gears.

Be patient with me in the transitions, please. But keep reading...