All the blog posts ... (that I didn't write)

You know how it is.  Ideas just come. All the time, but sometimes insistently. Like it wants YOU to do something with it.

And when an idea grabs me and asks to be written - sometimes although love the idea I don't have time or inclination, or it's not possible right then.  Sometimes I walk round the park with the dog whilst saying the whole post out loud just exactly as it in that moment comes into my head.

And sometimes I get home and write it.

And other times I write down a quick heading in my draft blogs to remind me what it was and so I can go back to it later.

I've just checked and there's over 20 headings in that draft folder including .... this very one ... 

And actually, for me - and for most of us, I believe, it's quite unusual to come back to an idea.

So often we have an idea, leave it for later and life and stuff gets in the way and we don't do it.

When we come back to it - MUCH later - the moment's passed and the inspiration's gone.  Yes, the idea's still good, but that free-flowing oh-I-can-hardly-type-fast-enough-to-get-my-thoughts-out has kind of gone.

When I read Big Magic (and saw Liz GIlbert speak on her Big Magic speaking tour last November), this was one of my favourite ideas - that ideas themselves are sort of alive and flying around looking for someone to bring them to life.  

And they settle on you, and you're all, 'YEAH this is a FAB idea', ... but if you don't do it, don't write it or sing it or whatever it is you wanted to do with it ... then the idea's going to fly off and find someone else as its vehicle for expression.

I really liked this! It gave an explanation to what happens to me all the time.

Personally, I have lots and lots of ideas every single day.  And the reason my tally of unwritten blogs hasn't actually increased since I first had the idea to write about it is because I now know I'm not going to 'run out' of ideas.

Ideas come every day. Some I'll jump on and I just can't NOT write them.  

Others I love but ... honestly, I know I'm not going to do.

And now, instead of writing them down as draft blog headings - and adding sub-consciously to that never-done 'to do' list - I let them go. (So much more freeing for us both).

They might come back. Our timings might coincide and collide again. 

But I don't try and keep them as 'mine', mine to come back to another time.  Usually both my energy and the idea itself are feeling stale and like a chore by then.

I let them go. 

I have no concerns at all that I won't have a million more live ideas tomorrow, and the next day.

And sometimes, well, infrequently, but like right now ... this idea came back to me and said, very loudly, 'GET OFF THE SOFA, PUT YOUR GLASS OF WINE ON THE TABLE, GET THE LAPTOP OUT, AND WRITE ME. NOW'.

And so I did.

And here this idea is - wanting to be seen and heard. 

Use them, lose them, let them go. They need to be heard but not always through you.

And you, you will ALWAYS have more ideas.

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PS. Every time I thought, 'All the blog posts', I sing it in my head to Kylie's 'All the Lovers'.

And I love that song, so hey :) 

PPS. That happens to me a LOT. Like, when I'm on a bus and it goes round Marble Arch and I think, 'Rach, just ONCE, just once DON'T think 'Cumberland Sausage Gate' and THEN I see the road sign and it says 'Cumberland Gate' - and too late; I've already thought NOT to think about it again ... 

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Happy 2-year ... ?

I'd been planning this post for a while.  For a couple of months in fact.

And this is not at all the post I'd planned to write.

My two-year blogiversary was 6 October and I was really looking forward to sharing my blogging 'journey' over these two years. I'd wanted to look back and celebrate what I've learnt and how far I've come.

I'd been entirely planning to talk about just 'starting' - if you don't just start doing something ... well, how can it ever improve? The whole point is just start and then you learn and develop along the way. You have to start even if you don't know how to do things, or how to make things look the way you want.  If you've got something to say, or you want to do, you need to start, or it's just an idea.

I kept meaning to see if I had any screenshots of my incredibly basic (and not beautiful) first blog and had been going to just share some of what my learnings have been over these two years and journey from wordpress blog to WP site to Squarespace and through four different domain names. (Oh the torture of changing nameservers and all that stuff).

And I think I will share that ... another time.  

Something was holding me back from actually writing this post and I'd started to think that maybe I just wouldn't write it at all as I wasn't feeling it.  After all - you don't have to celebrate blogiversaries.

But I do want to write it; it's just not the post I thought it was.  It's not a celebration of having been blogging for two years.  

It's something much bigger.

The blogging is a symptom, not a cause.  Not sure that's the right metaphor I have to say but the blogging is the outward sign of a much bigger inner shift and just a visible action of a much much bigger internal action.

This is a celebration of two years being conscious about creating my life and choosing to do things that matter to me, and that make me happy.

Like a lot of us, I'd spent until that point never really choosing what made me happy - oh I'd think I was but I was only choosing from what was there and what I could see.  

I could choose where to live, who to see, what jobs to get, which parties to attend, where to go on holiday - but I only chose from the choices I could see available, not consciously thinking what I wanted.

I travelled, I had fun, I had a good and interesting career in magazines ... but eventually it felt like it was all consuming me.  I was working hard but not feeling I was getting anywhere and I can see now when I look back why that was.

I didn't know where I wanted to get to, for one. And I never really felt in control and more than that I don't think I felt control was an option.  It just never occurred to me to take charge of my own life and to think and actually decide what I wanted.

And it took a very very long time and until things got quite dark and difficult before having my own personal epiphany.

Working in a stressful totally all-consuming job that wasn't for me (or my increasingly high blood pressure).  Spending and consuming to try and make up for that life and stress (that meant I missed seeing friends and missed out on life as I felt forced to prioritise work) ... being in debt that I wasn't really taking responsibility for.  

Well of course I wasn't!  

If I wasn't taking responsibility for my own happiness and my own life, I wasn't taking it for anything else.  And it sort of got worse and worse.  Inside anyway. Outside I still looked fine and normal (if grown a little quieter) - with a mortgage and my job and all the rest of the trappings of normal life.

One day - I just came to the end.  Nothing was really worse than anything before, but something small happened that was the straw that broke the camel's back and I just had a feeling of utter tiredness that I just couldn't do this any more.  

And suddenly and very clearly, with excitement and honesty and a feeling of joy and strength - my inner voice finally spoke up and said:

 ''Well, don't do it then"

And so I stopped. I didn't do anything that outwardly looked huge.  It was a huge inner shift, a personal thing and outwardly, all that people saw was that I changed jobs.

But for me - I finally took control of my life.  

I gave in my notice at the job that wasn't for me, without a job to go to.  I had three months' notice to find one.  And for the first time ever I asked myself what I wanted from my next job.  I didn't jump into a huge change of working for myself, or running away around the world, or a career change.  Small steps, but big ones.  Staying in the world I knew but consciously choosing something that I would enjoy and that would also give me time in my life to do other things and to work out what things those might be that would make me happy and fulfilled. 

I found it.  A job with a good publishing agency  and - unexpected bonus I hadn't been looking for - walking distance from home. I consciously took a role that was a step 'back' (something I might not have considered before as we're all so conditioned to keep pushing 'up') and yes, I took a bit of a pay cut.  These were conscious decisions to change my lifestyle and start creating the life I wanted. 

Two months after I started my new job - and my over-worked over-cooked brain started coming to life ... (and I'd got my head round the new job a little) - I opened my laptop one day and signed up for a free blog site.  I wrote my first blog post (a recipe for a spicy pork Thai salad) and with a little nervousness and a lot excitement, I posted it on Facebook. 

And that was the beginning.  One day, I'll be back to talk about my blogging journey from that first post and that first site and what I've learnt.

But for today, I'm celebrating (a month late) my two year anniversary of starting to create my own life and choosing what I want to do with it; choosing what makes me happy.

Happy 2nd happiversary! 

PS. Can you relate to any of this and more importantly, what do you consciously choose to do that makes you happy? Did you have a moment that's your own happiversary too? PLEASE SHARE! 

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