Tag: travel

The Spinners

I couldn’t think of a snazzy title for this post, but while I was sitting down to write it, the song “Working My Way Back to You, Babe” popped into my head. Anyone reading this old enough to remember that song, or the group named The Spinners? Anyhow, that’s what I wanted to write about in this post – about working my way back to you, my readers. It’s been a long dry year in my blog, and there are a few reasons for it.

What started what turned into a long sabbatical was trying to get recipes tried, typed up and put onto my blog. I claim that my kitchen is my happy place, but I’d ended up with so many sweet treats and desserts to try, when that’s not the kind of cooking I focus on. Plus, my laptop began acting up (it still is) and so I was fighting two battles simultaneously. People who know me know that I have a short string of patience, and I just finally gave up and decided to give this laptop a long winter’s night sleep.

Because I’d left that Happy Place post as a draft, every time I thought about writing a post, I knew I’d look at that in my draft file and while the blogger adult in me was telling me to press on, finish it and then let it go, the child inside of me was pouting and kept repeating, “But I don’t want to. I don’t want to. It will stress me out all over again!” Obviously, the temper tantrum worked.

But I have finally pulled up my big girl panties and decided that I’m going to ignore the Happy Place draft for now and post something entirely different. I’ve been so quiet here that only a few of my readers whom I actually know personally even know I’m still alive!

I don’t know how many posts I’ll put out there. I don’t know if there is anything I will write about that anyone else will even care about. I just know that I need to get my thoughts back in order and writing a blog post has always helped with that. So…. hopefully you’ll see me around a bit more!

It’s a Small, Small World…..

Often throughout my childhood, I remember my mother looking at me and saying, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” I didn’t know what she meant, only that it wasn’t said as a compliment.

Fast forward many years later to a late summer afternoon when I am taking a guided tour of Antietam National Battleground on a date. This wasn’t necessarily something I was looking forward to, but it was of great interest to my date and I was happy just to be spending time with him. I tried to listen and pay attention because I knew he would want to talk about what we heard over dinner. And, of course, we did.

I recall this scenario as if it were yesterday, because it was a ‘lightbulb’ moment for me. When I asked, “What was the most memorable part of the tour?”, the response was about the bloodiest day in history and how many people died in that single battle. Then, I got the same question asked of me, and without pre-thought, said, “When the guide talked about the battle being so aggressive that if your buddy next to you went down, wounded or dead, you just closed ranks and continued moving forward.” My date had a picture of the entire forest, and I was centered around and focused on one tree.

Yep, the lightbulb went on. And processing that later, I came to realize that my world – the world I live my life in – is a small picture, a very small picture – based often on the effect to one or a few rather than the affect to many.

I don’t watch the World News or any of the ‘all the news all the time’ channels. It’s not that I wouldn’t glance at it if I were somewhere where it was on, but because I absorb so much mentally and emotionally within my own small world, I simply don’t feel like I have the capacity to grasp anything going on outside it.

I don’t call myself an empath, and I’m not sure I’d qualify as one. When someone is feeling something, I don’t really feel what they are feeling. What I feel is what I think I would feel if I were in their shoes. I may be 100% accurate, or I may be 100% wrong. I just always seem to be in some state of feeling – it is emotionality that I believe is at the center core of me. Nonetheless, there is plenty to absorb in my small, small world, and I suspect I absorb more than my share.

I’d like, on some level, to be well-traveled like my friend, Marnette. She’s always flitting off to this country or that country, she loves history and architecture and experiencing other cultures. It doesn’t hurt that she studies the area she is planning on visiting, so that she is able not to feel overwhelmed by it all. I get to live vicariously through her photos and tidbits that she willingly shares on Facebook, and I feel content with that.

While that sounds exciting, I truly do prefer staying here in my own small world, traveling to places close by or already visited. I’ve learned to accept that I will never be knowledgeable about what is going on in the world, contenting myself with knowing that I have plenty to see and learn within my small world boundaries.

Yes, it’s a small, small world, and I’m happy to live within it…..

O