Hello... Again

This space keeps drawing me back. I have struggled with how it fits in my life. I have struggled with discerning which bits of each part of the previous chapters of my life are still important, relevant, and authentic and, thus, should be incorporated in the current chapter of my life story that I am busily writing. I have spent the last couple of years trying things on for size to see if they still fit. This process has been slow and unsettling in some ways, although exciting in other ways. Some things still fit in some ways but, when held up against other things, just aren't as important or valuable or meaningful or something. So, this space... how does it fit? where does it fit? 

For a period, I was focusing on my Instagram presence, hoping that I could monetize my documentation of my thoughts and experiences related to my journey of editing and curating my life. I started to build a nice little community, one with promise, when I became discouraged by a hacker wiping out my personal account and then going after "A Life Edited and Curated." I became disillusioned. I temporarily deactivated that account and put that endeavor on hold for the last ten months. I have discovered that I enjoyed that community. I enjoyed the accountability and found that documenting my experiences was motivating and documenting my thoughts helped solidify those thoughts, ideas and opinions. I have not, however, missed the business aspect of "A Life Edited and Curated", at least not in any significant way. It had the potential to be a nice side hustle but I am rethinking my need for that side hustle. I have lived without it for ten months and what I missed most was having that space to document and reflect. For years, this blog offered me that space to document and a place to go back to in order to reflect and reminisce. It is a space that feels like a warm embrace whenever I step back into it. It fits well.

For a significant portion of my life, pen and paper journaling has played an important role in the documenting of my life and the processing of my thoughts and ideas. For the past eight months I have been doing daily journaling in single signature simple journals that I have made from scrapbook papers and ephemera. I began making these journals as a way to use up my scrapbook and mixed media supplies that I was having difficulty parting with, despite the fact that I wasn't creating art or scrapbooks. I was buying premade journals. I was buying bits of paper bound within a cover when I had all sorts of bits of paper and could easily bind them within a cover. I have challenged myself to use up my supplies while doing my journaling. I have really enjoyed this process and love the journals that I have created. However, I constantly ponder how they fit into my life once my current scrapbook supply hoard is eliminated. I can envision using them, with very limited supplies, on my epic American road trip but they have to be immediate and streamlined. When I do mental imaging exercises about my trip, I can see myself crafting little journals from ephemera collected during my adventures but I also envision myself using this space for photos and more extensive writing. I can see how this space fits during all the chapters of my life.

So here I am, back in this space. I am so glad that it was waiting for me.