When this post was originally written, on Tuesday 20 January 2015, I could not find my way to publish it, having lost all sense of technological direction!
I have returned to the previously blank page today, Friday 27 March 2015, and edited it … this time adding the original script. Its confusing nature reflects the mental agony I was in, like ‘a rabbit frozen in the headlights’, trying to accomplish not only the technological aspect of the blog process, but facing sheer stage fright and much doubt about the value of writing a blog at all, all at the same time! Here follows what I had written:

Frustration … and being frozen in the spotlight

I want to get on with the writing of my blog … There is so much that I want to say, but I do not have a clear vision in my mind of what this ‘blog’ should look like, what things to share on it, nor the best way to go about it.  I think I am still stuck on the word “BLOG” ~ what does it mean? Where does it originate from?  Have I bought into something meaningless? Should I be using the precious time to write a book instead?

But I stumble on the word “book” too … ever since my teen years, people have suggested that I write, that I share my story with others, and that story has grown and grown, but something holds me back from “putting it all out there”.  Others have suggested that I write stories for children, but I remain stuck, stuck on the fact that I don’t know how to do any of most of the things that I already do, and certainly don’t feel that there is a children’s story waiting inside me, for it to write itself.

Anyway, do I really want to spend my life writing, when I could be somewhere in the sunshine, watching butterflies and absorbing the goodness of Nature? Or out amongst people, being challenged and inspired and grown, travelling and speaking and learning and contributing in all sorts of ways? The point is, I am not somewhere in the sunshine, and it is too frigidly cold outside to sit in the garden and, if I don’t write, I shall never ‘find my fortune’ (or, so it seems right now), and shall never be able to take myself back to the sunshine … Nobody else is going to do it for me, at least not in any hurry, and it would give me the utmost pleasure to break out of my cage. So I am going to write my way to a certain type of freedom … somehow.

However, with a very large “H”, I am constantly distracted … a solid sign of being frozen in the spotlight?  The weather is ‘Baltic’ outside today, and I have so many practical tasks to complete indoors, but I must get this ‘blog’ churning and humming, or I shall never break free … towards the sunshine, butterflies, year-round flowers and natural beauty, or whatever else is waiting in the wings.

As distracted minds can do, in a split second my mind drifted back to when I gave birth to my first and second child … that labour experience, in each case, was not a walk in the park either.  Perhaps this frustration, lack of clarity, and painful process of trying to birth something, is not dissimilar to the process that I endured, in order to bring those two beautiful souls into the world?

Determinedly ignoring the spotlight, taking courage into the process, I shall persevere … Perhaps this will, after all the hesitation, writer’s block and stage fright, turn out as beautifully, as rewarding, and as wonderfully as both of my children have, and that somehow I shall, at last, triumph through the pain that has caused the writing to be “me”.

Like one of my great heroes (who said it in the title of his book), it has been a “Long Walk to Freedom” …  so I say, with hope, let the internet journey towards my first book, via my ‘blog’ writings, begin!

And as the author Elizabeth Gilbert so neatly puts it:

“Your job is to write your heart out, and let destiny take care of the rest.”

Holly x