Sharing insights

Friday, 24th September 2021

            All it takes is a click of the mouse and I’m off task.  My heart cries out to be focused, self-disciplined and productive.  Yet, when clarity escapes me, rather than face the whiteness of the page, I opt for entertainment.  I lie to myself, thinking, “Just five minutes while I ponder how to continue.”  I go to the solitaire website.  Two hours and six games later, I’ve no closer to a fruitful outcome. 

            I don’t know what it is about being over 60 years old that allows me to become aware of my tendencies and automatic behaviors.  Yet, I find that there are moments that I step outside myself and make keen observations.  The most recent insight is that my initial determination to achieve a new goal lasts about three to four months.  Curiosity, research, and discovery, keep me interested.  As the mystery and mystique of a new skill are resolved, I find myself questioning how committed I want to be. 

My “on again-off again relationship” with knitting is an example of this.  Even as a young girl I wanted to know “old-fashion” skills. Since neither of my grandmothers and my mom didn’t knit, I began teaching myself to knit.  Over the years I knitted a couple of sweaters, for people and dogs. Oh NO!  Knitting is more than just casting stitches onto a needle.  It required counting, marking, increasing, decreasing, and finally casting the pieces off the needles.  That part was not enjoyable.    I didn’t like big projects. I knit slowly, so it takes me a long time to finish projects. 

Yet, I enjoy the rhythm of working the stitches and making something with my hands.  I liked the “idea” of knitting, rather than actually becoming a truly accomplished knitter.  These days, when I get a yen to knit, I cast 40 stitches onto a set of needles and knit a block.  Eventually, the blocks get sewn together to make a blanket. 

What I have come to understand is that my creative journey is a series of such indents.  I begin projects with more curiosity than commitment.  Once I understand the system of what I’m doing — I think I hit an over-saturation point.  I put the unfinished project down.  However, there is also within my make-up the need to return to that project and finish it.  My first book was like that.  Another project is a quilt I began in 2016.  After a rest period, and the information has settled into my brain, the desire to see the project finished keeps drawing me back until I complete the unfinished business. 

The purpose of this post is to share that when I disappear, that is when weeks or months pass between blog posts, I am usually taking some time off to get my bearings.  Since I launched “Angelee’s Dilemma”, I have found myself floundering with the marketing part of this endeavor.  I want things to be straightforward and easy.  But experience has proven that I need to learn new skills, using several web tools that are interconnected.  So, I took a few months off to try to determine what steps I need to take next. 

Tim Grahl, Jeff Goins, Joseph Michael, and Rob Eagar are self-publishing mentors/coaches.  According to them, a key element of selling books is developing an email subscribers list.  A few years ago, I purchased Jeff Goins’s, Intentional Blogging course.  Seeing as the course includes guidelines for growing an audience, I thought it was high time to actually access the course and implement the instruction.  I hope it will help me overcome those feelings of being overwhelmed, uncertain of what I should be doing next. 

It is my intention to send out a post each week—probably on Thursdays.  From my past season, I know that this is possible. 

It is also very possible that I will disappoint myself and you on occasion.  Should that unfortunately happen, please bear with me and keep me in your prayers. 

Serving Jesus, Author of our faith, Dalletta