Finding the spaciousness to reflect and express

I'm finally back after months of not posting. It's been a whirlwind of an experience that I'll talk about in future posts now that I'm finally now settling a bit more into my life in Hawaii. Also, I'm going to try an experiment.

Normally what keeps me from blogging and podcasting is the fact that I'm trying too hard to have a cohesive, meticulously crafted message. I want to make sure what I say has a certain standard of quality before I just put it out there, but my standard is so high for myself I often end up not posting anything at all. I still value clear and well-crafted expression, but I'm going to try to worry less about the overall form and structure and see if that works for me.

As is generally recommended when trying to build a new habit, I'm planning to start small, with more brief but hopefully more frequent updates. Hopefully in time this approach helps me not only more CONSISTENTLY express myself, but also more EFFICIENTLY express myself. 🤙🏻

But let's bring it back one step: Why do I want to express myself?

1. As I survey what's happening in the world, I must say that I'm quite saddened by what I see: ignorance, bullying, misinformation, grandstanding, and all around toxic communication. Although I'd just be one tiny raindrop in the storm, I'd like to do my part in spreading a message of unconditional love while sharing insights and discoveries from my life that I feel others might find valuable.
2. Secondly, it helps me organize my own thoughts and feelings. If I don't actually take the time to sit down and reflect on my thoughts, I can feel like I'm just running on auto-pilot.
3. People who want to follow my life can. This is actually huge! I struggle with updating all my friends and family about my life, which makes sense — it's not realistically possible to send personal messages to each and every person you care about every time you want to share something. That's one of the things social media actually got correct, which is that it makes a lot more sense for people to follow the updates of those they want to hear from, rather than trying to as an individual send your updates to everyone in your life (many of whom many not even care!).
4. It creates a record of my existence which my descendents may someday be grateful for as they try to piece together what ideas and events influenced their family and ultimately themselves. (Yes, I'm extremely forward thinking, if you haven't already found that out about me. 😂)

So with these goals in mind, here begins a new chapter. I'm probably going to write a few posts going over the various happenings of the past 6 months just so everyone has the context for where I am today, so expect the next few posts to be more of a retrospective.

Stay tuned!

With infinite love,
Nathan