December 10, 2008 – So it is, I suppose, a choice in some ways. Life is complex, challenging, unnerving, especially now, where disturbing news seems to rain out of the screens and radios and gloom is a contagion, anxiety a fellow traveler. We have to make our own good news, I think, because they won’t make any for us. We need to tell our stories.
  I’m making time for that. Joy is a choice too, and love.
  For me, time to change the narrative. One life at a time, one person at a time. Narratives are critical to writers, and artists, and I suppose to people who live on farms as well. We all write our own story, and do our best to live it. We all fail at times, and the failure to live up to our narrative is inevitable, built into the narrative. Success is not. Nobody really controls their story, just our hopes and aspirations for it. And nobody else controls our story either.
  I think our own narratives – our own signals to the world – are critical. More than ever, it is important to be fulfilled. To walk through confusion and fear and keep moving, tell our stories in our lives, in our writing, photos, quilts, paintings and the many individual ways we have of expressing ourselves.
  Every day, create, create, create. And I am ruthless about it. Whatever keeps me from creating is a foe to be challenged and, if possible, moved out of the way.
  The hero’s journey is not about success, but about searching for fulfillment. About creating defiant narratives and using them to give rebirth to our lives, again and again. The process is frightening, exhausting and exhilarating. It does not, I think, ever stop, not until the last breath. Fear is always a companion, but it is, truly, a space to cross.
  Our stories are radioactive jewels that sparkle through the clutter and alarm. They have their own lives.
  Tomorrow, a day of storms and ice, and hopefully of good writing and photo taking. My story, one day at a time.