I need to preface this post with a bit of background. Everything below the photo was written on March 12, 2020. The next day our world went into lockdown-self-preservation-fleeing from a pandemic-hyper vigilant-sterilizing everything- full on terror mode. The irony that I posted a stock photo of a sign that read “Come In We’re Open and Awesome” is absolutely not lost on me.
Something that I am constantly doing and have been for most of my adult life is reading blogs and finding solace in all of the universal experiences and feelings. This year has kept us farther apart and more separate than ever and yet, in some strange way, I feel more united. I feel that we have endured this year together. We have been resilient together. We have found silver linings and ways to amuse ourselves. We have shared meme’s and stories. We have found our commonality and our core beliefs. We have seen ourselves reflected in other peoples faces and words. We have become aware of the insignificance of things we held on pedestals and the massive importance of tiny moments. I discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, that writing is my own version of therapy. It’s how I understand what is going on in my mind and in my life and where those threads intersect. So this website is coming back to life…again! Just like all of us are suddenly feeling a tiny glimmer of light at the end of this treacherously long and dark tunnel, so too will my teeny tiny corner of the internet be coming back to life.
I will leave you with my never-before-published because a pandemic hit the next day post from last year. I will also leave you with my word that I will bring this site back to life. I will bring my thoughts to the forefront. I will use this platform to stretch my creative writing/journalism/idea sharing/product suggesting/question asking muscle on a public level. There is a certain level of editing that must be performed when you are releasing your thoughts and ideas into the wild and I like the challenge that presents. I like the idea of growing through, and with, my writing. I am coming to this website older, more mature, not jaded but more aware, and also with a better understanding of how life works. I always thought that I couldn’t be a “blogger” until I had a perfect vision of my “brand.” I couldn’t start until my writing was at its most polished. I couldn’t start until I had a thick enough skin to risk putting myself “out there.” My skin is thicker, having children will do that to you. Perspectives change. Challenges strengthen you. You experience the pain of breaking and the triumph of becoming stronger in the broken places. (Paraphrasing a famous Ernest Hemingway quote here -“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”). Writing a few words on a website and hitting publish is a lot easier than taking care of another human being who is solely and completely dependent on you.
So this is my vision for Daily Moxie (and for my writing in general). I am writing to learn. I am writing to grow. I am writing to understand, appreciate, notice, and pay attention. I am writing to find the silver lining. I am writing to air my grievances. I am writing to make sense of the senseless and to find hope in the hopeless. I am writing to prove to myself and anyone reading that we exist in this time and space together. We are all connected. We may have different beliefs but we are more similar than we think.
I am writing because, as Joan Didion says, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”
So yes, some of my writing will be deep and meaningful. It will ask questions and hopefully provide ideas and maybe even some answers. It will also show you the lens through which I view my life, what I see, what I like and love and what I feel it all means.
I’m just one voice. But sometimes, that’s all it takes to make a difference in your own life or someone else’s. So here goes…
I have been blogging on and off for over 15 years. I have word counts that number in the hundreds of thousands and yet I am constantly comparing myself to other people who have done it “better” or are able to monetize a system so fluidly that it leaves me practically dumbfounded and fully overwhelmed. But what is the point of a blog? What is the meaning behind sharing our thoughts, views, ideas, and fears in a public forum? Because it helps unite us all in a common, universal experience called life. We are all in this together and never has this been more apparent than during the fear of an unknown virus (Covid-19). I truly hope (and pray) that one day we will all be able to look back on this time with feelings of triumphantly surviving a catastrophic pandemic. This is unchartered territory for every single human on this planet. This has literally never happened before.
As a constant silver lining seeker, I can tell you that I truly believe we can use this time as a learning and growing experience. We can take this time when we are forced to quarantine ourselves and shut ourselves off from the fast-paced, competitive world and actually do the work that we have always wanted to do. Be the people we have always wanted to be. Look inside and see what brings us happiness, what makes us eager to get up in the morning (even in the face of tragedy, fear, and uncertainty) and pursue that. What is worth our time and dedication? What brings us joy? What can we do to help others while helping ourselves and hopefully understanding more throughout the process?
I know that one thing I can do is to stop comparing, stop pressuring, stop questioning, stop worrying and START DOING. Here is something I know about myself. I love to write. I have dozens and dozens of journals that I have filled to capacity. I have been keeping some form of journal or diary since I was six years old and I don’t have any plans on stopping. It’s on the page and through words that I solve my own problems and, oftentimes, prevent future problems from coming up. In my journals is where I first explored the intricacies of true friendships, the unpredictability of love (and lust), desires for life and work and love, fears, hopes, dreams, children, loss, sadness, heartbreak, anger, betrayal, and optimism. Everything. I wrote it all down. I didn’t always come up with an answer, quite frequently the last sentence of an entry was ended with a question mark but that didn’t matter because sometimes life is lived in those question marks. Sometimes answers don’t come easily (or ever, for that matter) but exploring your thoughts and feelings will always help you understand yourself. Writing it down lessens the impact, takes the steam out of our fears and helps move us forward.
So often what kept me from entering the blogosphere or writing for magazines, was the negative thought pattern of “why would anyone care what I have to say?” Through writing out these fears and delving into them more thoughtfully and with wider perspective, I realized that my writing helps one person tremendously, me.