I've been puttering away for a little while now at my new address in the blogosphere.  Come for a visit, won't you?  You can find me at:

Joy Is So Yellow
 
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I live in a part of the world that, while boasting of some pretty warmish wintertime temperatures, is rain soaked, to put it mildly. The gray, the incessant gray, seeps into our pores and into our wollens here.  The perpetual damp begins to wear on one after five months of living in it.  For me though, it’s more than that.  It’s the gray and the oppressive darkness of the gray sky.  It saps me of my energy and of my good and industrious intentions and of my normally quite positive perspective. This year, I purposed to up my Vitamin D intake and I’ve found that while it does make a difference, it doesn’t change the color of the sky.  It’s still gray and it continues to dump gobsmacking amounts of bone-chilling rain from its gloomy depths.  Vitamin D, though it’s claims are lofty, isn’t quite up to the task of counteracting all that.

But as I do every Spring that I live here, I remember again why I stay.  The sun shines and when it does, I can’t think of anything more beautiful.  My stretch of ancient forest begins to green and the fat birds come out again.  I hear them when I wake and their warbles make me think of blue sky.  Rays of sun stretch out over my tousled bedding and as I lie there with my eyes still closed, it occurs to me that everything is good and true.   Spring is here at long last.

 
I listened recently to our pastor speak about his own marriage and of how, once he put the time aside to spend some extended time with his wife, he was reminded anew of why it was that he married her.

It got me to thinking about my own marriage - with all its attendant ups and downs.  It occured to me as I reflected that if I were to isolate the 'secret' to our marriage's relative success, I'd have to say it is the focussing on of one anothers' best qualities.  This is not to say, most emphatically, that the JoyBoy and I aren't absolutely pock-marked with unpleasantness, for we are.  Most notably.  However, I always find I'm most happy within my marriage when I look (and then continue to look) at JoyBoy's beautiful qualities.  And there are countless, I might add.  Conversely, I'm never more unhappy living life alongside him than when I'm looking at his failings and dwelling there, in that looking.  I'm a wiser woman when I laugh at his ceaseless loving teasings than when I wonder why it is he doesn't tidy our yard more regularly.  It's more fun to think of his constant (and by that, I do mean constant) good nature than to feel ticked that he's left his clothes all about (again).  There's so much about him to respect and love and admire.  Why would I rain on our shared parade by looking at his relatively few failings?



 
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At some point in the life of a blogger, the question arises:  Why?  What's the point of all of this, anyway?  Isn't this a colossal effort for nothing, really?

For me, the answer has ebbed and flowed to become something altogether different over time.  I started at first to invest into that component of myself who is a writer.  My husband had been reading a book that said, essentially, that what separates the good from the best in life (in whatever field of endeavor) was about 10,000 hours of practise.  I determined then to begin my 10,000 hours and so Joy Is So Yellow was born.

I found that - like most things in life - there is a steep learning curve to be climbed.  I go through periods of hating my blog and seriously considering shutting the whole thing down.  There have been times when it felt a lot more like work and smacked far less of joy.  In those early days, I was loathe to hit the 'publish live' button because I felt I could never be sure the post was quite perfect.  Now, I begin to grasp that though these posts are far from that evasive, idyllic state, the perfection part isn't the point.  For me, what blogging has mostly done is to help me come to define myself inside my own head as a writer.  Writers write, right?  And how on earth does one ever cast off the mantle of unpublished without these long, dry early days?  I see that I'm wise not to resent these days but instead, to view them as an investment into the Self I hope to grow into being.

I've grown to love the little community that gathers around me here.  I'm touched and humbled by the fact that these (for the most part) mysterious people continue to read.  The fact that what I've got to say somehow means something to anyone other than my egocentric old self is surprising and lovely and bolstering.

P.S.  Can you believe the audacity of me, putting a picture of Jane Austin up to accompany this entry?  Me and Jane - we're pretty tight.
 
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Ah, you thought I meant Justin Bieber, didn't you?  Actually, I'm referring to someone even cooler than that.  It's the JoyBoy.  And he's away on a business trip.

I am struck again by the colorlessness of our lives when he's gone from them.  No one plays the guitar (though really, someone *else* is supposed to be practising, though I don't have the heart to enforce it, energy-sapped single parent I now am). 

No one else surfs the internet for motorcycles, yelling out every now and then for the rest of us to come look at the most recent cool one he's just found, enthusiasm spilling out all over the place.  He NEEDS for us all to see each one, loving it as he does.

He is one of those people from whom more than the average allotment of life spews forth.  We all love to be around him.  So much that is yellow and funny and warm emanates from this boy.  We can't wait for him to come home.
 
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"You can't change the whole thing, but all you can do is what's in front of you.  Write one poem, grow one flower.  Bring something of beauty into the world, and become more beautiful by the act."
                                                        W.S. Merwin, Poet Laureate