In the Rearview : )

      I don't want to live life in the rearview, but sometimes the view is better from that direction.  Grass is always greener in the future.  Past and future.  But what about the present?  This is creative nonfiction, memoir writing if you will.  Recollecting the past, anticipating the future, and the writer is in the middle.  The past gives us material, reflection in the present can lead to understanding in the future.  

     Each of us have our past which shapes us, our present which defines us, and our future, the dreaded or deeply anticipated unknown.  What lingers longest is the past.  We remember what we remember how we remember it today.  Writing our memories is a way of making meaning of our lives.  Writing our memories is what connects us to universal themes.  I haven't lived your life, but I have lived mine and I have my own stories of love and loss, triumph and learning, doing this and that, feeling joy, sadness, possibilities.  Through our memories we not only connect with ourselves, but share with others in what we do and don't understand about life.  Often it is  easier to comprehend life when we visit through the lens of someone else--  as evidenced in literature, spoken stories, movies, art.  I and Thou.  

   I want to peek in the rearview so I don't miss the sunsets in unanticipated places.  I want to take the material I have gathered over decades of writing and flesh it out and place it in public view.  I offering to Thou.  What do we have in common? What makes one life unique?  

   In 2006 I was emerging from a deep depression triggered by the sudden death of my beloved.  I knew writing to be my helpmate, and I wrote and wrote in journals, filling them with fingernail grips on each day.  But journal writing, while necessary, was not what I longed to do.  My creative spark lie dormant.  Where was the kindling?

    As a way of holding myself accountable to blend past with present, I decided to write about one person or thing or idea from my childhood for 100 days.  I was inspired by an artist's exhibition I wandered into in Wyoming when we were looking for a bathroom break on the way back from Yellowstone.  Jim Brandenburg took one photograph a day from the Spring to the Winter's Equinox.  I thought writing one short piece a day would be easier than CHASING THE LIGHT. Some days it may have been, other days not so.

   I'll challenge myself again.  I'll put those ideas to work in this blog.  One a day.  I'll write them down as I did, and in current time.  From the far past, to the near past, to the present.  I'll be eager to explore what I knew then, and what I know now.  And, how all of this may help for the future.  For my writer self.