It's been two years since I made my first, and disappointingly single, attempt to blog...two years packed with good and bad, jubilant and sad, and probably more importantly, reflection and growth.
Significantly missing now from my profile list of interests is pottery or ceramics: a class I took two summers ago spawned a growing passion for working with clay and the 3-D outlet it provides for whatever creative expression I lately feel inspired to make. The gift of a wheel over the Christmas period last year, and participation in another class at MHC as well as a new one this summer at AB-Tech, has helped make that passion a little more disciplined and artful. There is still a long way to go to master even small aspects of the craft, but it's been a surprisingly humbling and gratifying journey, with some good material outcomes and even better new friendships with like-minded clay-cooking fans.
A gift of another wonderful tool, a Nikon 3100 last May, has led to my recommitment to a long-held passion, photography and photojournalism! Fortunately the camera has a way of making me look much more skilled than I really am, so the pics I've been able to take have been a gift to me and others, and I have already built up several albums of travel, nature and portrait/event photos on facebook to share. The best part is that those images become a visual record of my life but I suppose in so doing, became a distraction from keeping this blog current! Let it be known that I do keep pretty regular handwritten journal updates, which remain private thankfully - both for my sake and for the sake of not boring the world with my mental or emotional 'dumping' each week!
Events woven throughout the last two years as the inevitable periods of shadow that make the stars or daylight shine brighter were the passing on of special people (Tim's sister Pam, great-aunt Linda, my neice Roxanne) and long-time pets (Varmy), my parents' relocation to South Africa in 2010 and the complications that isolation and age brings to their life there now, my son's need for a medical withdrawal from college last semester, and the financial struggles affecting real estate and higher education, leading to significant loss of income and related uncertainties for us and many others. These were not without upsides though! Two trips to South Africa since then (home truly is where the heart is), Skippy living back at home for the last semester and on MHC campus for two courses, and forced realignment of priorities for all of us.
The last point brings me back to this: the reflection required to blog becomes a way of assessing the value of each experience and the real meaning of the passage of time in one's life. It is a public expression of some intensely private and personal events which, like the pottery and photography, may be largely and simply therapeutic but I hope do become more of a trail-clearing exercise to open views to a life well-lived and to self-actualization; and if not itself a pathway, at least blogging may serve as a mirror for self or a lens with which others may zoom inside on moments in this 'one precious life' ...for haven't we just spent the last semester teaching via Socrates that 'an unexamined life is not worth living'?
So be it then, dirty laundry and all....!
Monday, May 14, 2012
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