Promises Kept

Keeping promises made to others has always been a source of pride.  If I give my word to someone, I do everything in my power to keep it.  When it comes to promises I make to myself...I am nowhere near as fastidious.  I make excuses, I delay, I lose faith.  I find this pattern to be akin to taking better care in general of others than myself, a habit all too common among women in particular.  While the pandemic and subsequent months in lockdown did not make me a sourdough baker or a side hustle starter, it did force me to reflect on what I deny myself by not prioritizing my own needs and wishes.  I have since taken a number of steps to take better care of myself -- solidifying habits I had started but not consistently maintained, introducing new routines to my day that in some way or other promote my own peace of mind or health, and perhaps most importantly, have worked hard on letting go any unnecessary (and ultimately damaging, counterproductive) guilt I had once associated with prioritizing my own needs.

The one thing that is left for me to address, though, is my long-broken promise to myself to write.  A lifelong lover of books and reading, I have always harbored a secret desire to write.  As a young girl, I thought periodically about what life would be like as a novelist, though those fantasies were often fleeting and never pursued beyond sketches of characters, paragraphs of a chapter, pages upon pages of first lines.  More recently, I have added blogs to my daily reading life, opening up a whole new world not just of reading possibilities, but of writing possibilities.  Thoughts of maybe I could write one as well or if her, why not me have crept into my mind more and more often.  Sadly, though, those thoughts are generally followed by thoughts of but they're not in their forties or what on earth would I say or, least important, perhaps, who would read it.  

This blog will now serve as my "who cares?" response to that negative inner dialogue.  Honestly...who cares?  It is possible that there are treasure troves of blogs floating around written by women (or men) of my age.  I have plenty to say.  Perhaps my words will only ever be seen by me.  Ultimately, writing anything at all, seen by the masses or only my own eyes, is a promise to myself that I can keep.  I am not wise in the ways of dressing up or promoting a blog, but there is time for that down the road.  There is nothing to dress up and nothing to promote if I don't sit down and just start writing.

So...here I am.  I am thrilled to get started, and wherever this little journey takes me, I plan on having a lot of fun.  I plan on keeping my promise.

XO

Susan