Moving On

Moving On

Time is moving on, even as I write this the clocks continue to tick, life moves forward through the seasons and the smaller daily events that we choose to engage with keep us busy as time duly passes.

A year on from starting this blog I am far more aware of where this work is going and yet blindly naive of its final outcome. With this in mind I have decided to slow down on the blog and concentrate on the big picture.

I was directed to a poem during a workshop with Mary Reynolds-Thompson last year titled 'The Summer Day' by Mary Oliver. Here is the last part of it, which I feel is relevant to how I feel and where I am now.

'I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?'

What exactly is it that I want to do? I met up with a publisher earlier this week and he asked me that. I told him I am in the process of writing a book based on my blog. Silence. Then I remembered the last Friday's 'Blue Banana' business meeting and I understood what he meant.

 

What was my 'prime directive', what strategy was I following? For example, did I want to produce the book as a 'calling card' by which I could market at workshops and talks? What is of value in the blog that I want to share, which reflections have moved my project on? What actually is my project? Why am I even considering writing a book?

 

So with this in mind, this deep questioning of my plan...'with your one wild and precious life', I will walk backwards away from what I thought I was going towards, to gain an overview of it and its environs. I will retreat slowly and carefully and see what aspects of the blog writing that I miss, and hopefully this will remind me of why I have kept writing every week for the last year. What is it that I enjoy discovering whilst out walking, that I want to share with others?