Call it the ceremonial paging of a new calendar, flipping the year from 2022 to 2023. In my younger days, the ushering in of a new year would almost certainly be accompanied by a late-night party with friends, a meandering brook of festive cocktails, streamers and noisemakers, highly impractical shoes (for a Nebraska winter, mind you) smartly paired with a bolero or skirt adorned with enough sequence to light up the midnight sky.
But now?
Now, in my early forties, I’m unbelievably content noting New Year’s Eve on my calendar, with a low-key gathering among family, a home-cooked meal, fleece-lined lounge pants and warm slippers by 8 p.m. (with an electric blanket or comforting heating pad), and a cup of caffeine-free tea for good measure.
Regardless of when we join the rest of the world on January 1 of any given year, we find ourselves in a potential place of transition. The opportunity naturally presents itself for change. Continue moving through life in the same form or fashion – or try something completely new.
And yet we’re given this precious choice for change each and every day of our lives. New beginnings can almost always occur on January 2, January 22, March 1, and so on.
For whatever reason – one I imagine I won’t fully understand for quite some time – writing in this space, with this voice, once again sounded appealing. Peppering these code-driven pages (and not those printed on paper and stored on a shelf) with my thoughts as words felt familiar and even a little bit needed.
After some digital housekeeping here and there, fixing broken HTML code and replacing old plug-ins with new ones, the pull to get back to my writing roots began to grow.
Even further hunting and pecking brought me to this meaningful piece of data: my first blog post went live on September 7, 2003.
Which means September marks TWENTY YEARS since I began filling this online space. My writing “career” began much earlier than that, but the writing I grew to love (accountable to no one but myself) began on a handful of long-forgotten blog platforms and eventually found a home here, at wendytownley.com.
And with a few years’ absence, two books, a thesis for graduate school, and freelance articles too numerous to count, I find myself called to begin again. Writing here as I’m called, when I have something to share or thoughts to digest, best served up beyond the boundaries (and distractions) of social media.
The countdown to September has begun. Let’s see where this road leads.
Posts Tagged: 'Writing'
Let’s See How This Feels
Where I Have Been
In recent months I have pulled back considerably from all forms of social media. My blog has sat quiet since 2017. This has been somewhat intentional and somewhat a byproduct of who I am and, perhaps most importantly, who I am becoming.
The older I get – I turn forty in December (!!!) – the greater the pull to put my personal needs first. Like so many of you, I imagine, I strive to meet each day’s goals. My ever-growing task list is at the ready. The bed is made each morning. The trash is taken out. The dogs are fed. The laundry is washed, dried, put away. And on. And on. And on.
At work and in my various community commitments and passions, those lists are just as long (if not more so). Emails, text messages, and phone calls are returned. Meetings are scheduled. (Sometimes they’re rescheduled.) Meetings take place. And then comes follow up. And follow up. And even more follow up.
Precious time with my husband, our dogs, our families brings me tremendous joy and peace. It is a balm that I find increasingly necessary in a world of my own choosing – a world of important work and human interaction on a daily basis.
Which is why my need to share Every Waking Moment and Every Fleeting Thought on social media and even this very blog has dramatically declined. Radical self care, personal creativity, knitting, gardening, reading, journaling, time alone each morning in prayer. Those hours populating my social media accounts have been replaced with daily habits that have proven far more satisfying and far more beneficial to my own wellbeing.
That’s not to say I still don’t find laughter and comfort and solace and hope in what all of you are sharing on social media. I am. These days I’m just far more selective about what I am sharing.
I have my dear friend Angel to thank for helping me find a morning prayer routine. She introduced me to the Prayerful Planner late last year. When 2017 became 2018, and I dove into the Bible each morning, I was called to reconsider my day’s priorities. And since then, my life has changed dramatically.
The Illustrated Faith community has brought me equal amounts of joy. The 100 Days of Bible Promises book was a creative exercise I gingerly joined back in April, and quickly found the melding of color and words to be inspirational. The book itself was a soft landing for so many emotions – emotions that I imagine you experience on a regular basis. Those one-hundred days changed me for the better, and I’m eager to continue on this journey.
And just yesterday I spent six hours blissfully alone in silence at the Rainforth Retreat Center. My morning hours were spent sprawled out on the most comfortable, oversized couch with coffee and in prayer. As a few passing thunderstorms moved through after lunch, I put the finishing touches on the manuscript for my next book. (More details on that coming soon. Promise. And fingers crossed.) At 2 p.m., I clicked send on an email to the publisher of my first book, Nerdy Thirty. It has been eight years since Nerdy Thirty was published, and it has taken as many years – if not more – to determine what my next foray into the book world would look like. Hammering out another collection of breezy essays could have easily come sooner, but it would not have been the book I wanted to write.
I needed to live life more, figure out the stories I wanted to share. Selfishly, I wanted my next book to be just for me. And it took me a while to determine what that looked like. But yesterday afternoon I landed on a collection of essays that I hope gives you a sense of where I have been and who I am becoming.