Rules

Okay, I've edited my first and only entry about eight times in the nine days since I posted it. Is that legal? And can I still count it as a first?

Here's why I haven't posted a second: I can't find a focus. Now, the title of my blog, Splashes and Splurges, was strategic because it was supposed to leave the door wide open for me to write about anything. (ANYTHING!) But, in typical Maureen fashion, I agonize over the detail, the focus (or lack thereof) and the implications that writing about anything creates for everything and everyone in my life. I invent internal rules that make exploration impossible and spend precious time searching for external permission to break them.

It's sounds heavy, but it's really just a convoluted way of saying I cop out.

I told a friend recently that I crave clarity. Clarity is what I crave.

A method for achieving it is what I lack.

Until yesterday.

I watched a DVR'ed episode of Oprah on which she had Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat. Pray. Love. I'm still in the first third of the book, the Eat part, which I'm thoroughly enjoying and the fact that I'm running a marathon this weekend gives me complete freedom to eat pasta and pizza and everything Italian in between--(see, there is that external permission!) but I digress.

I like the book. A lot (and for a lot of reasons). But I also like (and find very important) her emphasis on the understanding that it reflects HER experience and not one that we/others/I/you should attempt to create. Initially, I had "recreate"--but not even Elizabeth "created" her experience. She left herself open to the possibility of God's will for her and His intervention that is Divine and guiding. Others/my/your/our journey will lead somewhere else. If you listen carefully to her words--both written and oral--and how they come together to tell her story, you too will understand this. We want easy--and retracing someone else's path is easy. But what we want and what we need often compete. Easy is the short term win that doubles as a long term loss.

However, there is one thing of hers that we can create--and this is from her mouth: to write down everyday what it is you really really really want.

Oprah's question was my rule, "Want when? Now, tomorrow, when?" Elizabeth's reply was my permission, "Whatever. It will come. Just write down everyday what you really really really want."

So, I'm going to use this blog as my permission. Not to write down what I really really really want, though sometimes I'm sure that will weave its way in and out of my words, but a method to achieve the clarity I crave. Permission to just to write down, period. Firsts, lasts, laughs, loves, everything, anything, nothing at all. You know, splashes and splurges.