Might As Well Face It I’m Addicted to Blogs

There, now you have an ear worm too!

Over the last few weeks, just when I thought that I was finally getting around to reading the end of the Internet, I started reading blogs, lots of blogs.  I’ve had one or two saved over the years that I follow pretty religiously, but this recent craze of mine is, well, blog-a-lishous!  I’ve found stuff that interests me, stuff that doesn’t, people who are living out their dreams, and those who are having a tough time with life.  I’ve learned new ideas, new techniques, and new trends.

The best thing I have found from reading blog after blog after blog is inspiration.  It’s funny that in this world full of billions of people that you can find something to read, by a real person, about something that you are interested in all the while gaining a new and different type of perspective other than the same old boring one you’ve been dragging around for years.

What’s that definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results?  Is that totally true?  For the most part, yes it is, but in the world of blogging there can be 50 (or even 5000) of the same type of blog, but each one will have a different outcome or result.  Why is that?  I believe that it’s one trait that we are all born with, but some people never realize it while others take it and amazing things happen.  It’s called creativity.  I’m sure there’s some study out there about creativity and the traits that one has to hold to gain maximum potential.  I mean, there really is only one Sistine Chapel, right?

I really want to work on my creative traits that I know are lurking just below the surface.  I want to be able to push back from my desk and look at my blog and see something that probably a gaggle of other people have out there, but is uniquely mine and it stands out for me.  I want to be proud of what has grown out of a whim and hopefully into something great, something that I can cultivate like a garden and watch thrive and grow. 

I want the finished product to be kind of like a piece of sea glass.  You throw broken bottle pieces into the sea, and on a beach somewhere thousands and thousands of miles away the most beautiful piece of tumbled glass that is as unique as I am is found by another creative soul who will use that piece of glass for inspiration.

Box of Rocks

I moved a few years ago from Arkansas to Florida, so I looked at that as a time to clean out the boxes that were gathering dust in my attic. I found items from my childhood, diaries from when I was a teenager, study manuals from Navy boot camp, but the most interesting thing I found were rocks. In the bottom of several boxes, there were rocks. There were funny looking rocks, rocks that I clearly suckered a parent into buying me from an overpriced museum gift shop, and rocks that I had not the slightest clue as to where they may have been picked up. There were a few seashells rolling around in the bottom of those boxes also.

I sat in my garage in the sweltering summer Arkansas heat and thought about rocks. I've always been the type of person that when walking along, keeps one eye on where I am going, but also one eye on the ground, because you just never know when you will see something that should be picked up. I guess I've had this fascination with the fossils of the earth since I was a kid. I had never really thought about it before, but then I did recall that trip to a castle in Wales. I was wandering around the grounds of this perfect Welsh castle and there was a pile of rocks. I remember looking left, looking right and plunking a piece of that castle in my purse. That rock sits today on my home office desk with a picture of the castle.

Now that I live in Florida I obsess not only over the rocks, but the seashells! I have glass containers of them all over the house, I think it's a requirement for living near the sea. I'm borderline selfish when it comes to shells also. My mother came to visit this past Thanksgiving and we took a stroll on the beach one day after lunch. I brought my trusty bucket and proceeded to barge ahead of the group to be the first person to get all the great shells. Only later did I realize that was kind of selfish, and I gave up a portion of my loot to my mom. I did keep all the sharks teeth and sea glass though.

Even though My Life with Seashells was born today, out of the land of Blogger, My Life with Seashells began a few decades ago. I've recently hit the first significant milestone in my life that has made me step back and think about what is most important to me, what matters most, and what I want the next few decades to look like.

As the sea shapes and smooths the rocks and the glass and the shells, I will shape this next and new exciting chapter in my life.