Public and Private Life

I have the ways of a hermit. As a young child, I dreamed of being like bird scientist, Nell Porter, in the movie, Continental Divide. Although my interest in eagles was rather limited, the idea of roughing it alone in a quiet mountain cabin appealed to my soul. I would write children's novels of course. All through my life, I found myself drawn to a life which would take me away from the hustle and bustle and people, whether it was emulating Heidi's grandfather in his cabin in the Alps, living in a cozy, wind-blown lighthouse like Captain Jim, or just homesteading out in the wilds of Alaska. Yes, by golly, that was the life for me.

As I have grown older, however, I have noted my practical knowledge of the world is small and rivals my lack of understanding for people and how to get along with them. Perhaps maybe a quiet apartment in the city, surrounded by books, and with the ability to watch my neighbors, cat in lap, and imagine what they are up to, would be best. 

But then, every so often, a desire rises in my soul and I WANT to be known. Even if I am the only person who sees the value in these thoughts, I want them out in the world-I want them stuck in someone else's head. 

I feel this change. Not that something is necessarily coming to me, or going to happen, but this other drawer has been pulled open in  my head and light is pouring out of it. It isn't all good. I see things, like I put in my retracted blog post about principles versus value, that show my failings all too clearly. I was too embarrassed at my own naivete and blindness to leave it up. Maybe someday I will get the nerve. Maybe today. It is hard. I get that I make mistakes. But on something so obvious, it is just humiliating. 

People my head has clung to and been influenced by for a decade are fading. They haven't done anything wrong, I just feel the currents are pulling our boats apart-which is odd, because they were tied together for inexplicable reasons for so long.

But on the outside, everything is the same. I have the same job, the same home, the same lack of friends. I just keep existing, but the whirls imprinted within are shifting, the colors clouding and reforming to something new.

My faith is faltering as science just keeps pressing its nose into reality. I guess I feel how can we be so important when the Universe is so big? How can one group of people, who do so much terrible, hateful damage in the world, also have knowledge of the truth? It is just faith.  One chooses to believe or not to believe. One chooses which version to believe. I will eventually choose it again. It is easier to close one's eyes and drift along, than swim against the tide, especially when the end will hit us all with the same drowning pull. And I live in Rome.

A little over a year ago, maybe a year and a half, I prayed a very earnest prayer to get over a particular problem. I prayed to be moulded in a certain way. I have found it to be painful and humiliating. I have also discovered, the medium, the clay-the marble, me, has a say in the moulding. We may be shifted and chiseled and pushed and pull, but we push and pull and shift in return. We are not nothing. We have a say in the moulding. We can never lose us.

I am struggling with the A Mighty Queen blog,  because who am I to give advice? This is more of a Just Jill post. But I am reading a book, Show Your Work! which advocates just using your voice and getting it all out the world-whatever it is you need to express, and so I jumped. But people want certain leadership, and someone to say, "Hey, follow me, I have the answers." But all the answers are made up and chosen. But I guess the presribed path is safe. If you fail-well, the leader, the "J" probably led  you wrong. Can I lead by not leading. By simply expressing my truth? 

What is this trend toward leadership? Doesn't that imply others must then follow? Why not, instead of leadership, use the term, action. Or Initiative, or Inspiration General,or something doesn't imply winners and losers right from the start?

This wasn't the post I intended to write. But maybe it was the post I needed to write.

I am off work for today and the next four days. I need the break.