The Real First Day of Spring

According to Environment Canada, the temperature is 13 degrees Celsius, with winds from the North at 13 km/h.  It sounds cold to those not used to it, but it’s heavenly under clear and sunny skies.

I had my supper and hauled out my stuff:

The lap desk didn’t work.  Right now one of my TV tables doubles as a writer’s desk.  Everywhere people cycled, walked,and ran, generally enjoying a day to finally shed a few layers.  The only compromise made to this weather is my beaten-up, long sleeve, red fleece.

I ran a few errands before getting a lift to my writer’s group.  I knew these people before with one new face among the bunch.  In the 90’s I had too much going on to establish anything.  Now with a little stability, and a lot of maturity, the desire to write met with see one member of the group at Chadwick Ginther;’s book launch for Thunder Road.

My writing was not the only thing to dust off.  At work I do something called ‘Link of the Day’.  Basically, I find articles and sites connected to the subjects the college teaches, plus libraries and technologies.  It’s a rotating job and my stint came to an end.  I enjoyed that task.  I have a system, and people responded well to my choices.  One link on bullying lead to one of my colleagues purchasing a book mentioned in the article for the library.

Now what, I thought.

Well, there’s your Twitter feed, suggested the inner voice Why not use it for something else other than publicizing your blog posts?

I met a writer named Graeme Brown (@GraemeBrownWpg) at C4 and he wanted my Twitter handle to follow me.  That, folks, got the ball rolling again. Considering I set up my Twitter account to follow Nathan Fillion in the first place, I would say things have evolved.

Bring me back to feeling stuck.  In fact I feel less stuck.  Now it’s time to pick a direction and keep going.  One direction already in my arsenal all along-the book talks.  Chadwick’s publisher, Ravenstone, called me a ‘Book Blogger’ and linked to my book talk on Thunder Road.  The math is simple on this one as I read and talk about what I’m reading; All of it equals book blogger.

Marianne Williamson wrote a piece often quoted by people, but now I finally get what she meant by it. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,  she wrote, Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
I don’t advocate the soulless self-esteem revolution students get nowadays.  From time to time, I lost and lost big.  I have flunked courses, wrote terrible works, and most of all mistook humility with personal put downs.  I learned to know it all by knowing nothing at all.  I learned to have confidence by not fearing mistakes. All of it takes work.  Every day I sit down to write and it feels like a strip tease.

Sometimes I hit it out of the park.

Sometimes it runs afoul.

At least I show up.