ooops, I did it again!

We all make mistakes.

In fact, as I am writing this, I am sitting in a local Barnes & Noble Cafe waiting for a Writer's Group to begin. I made child care arrangements because I don't like to leave my child home alone too late at night. I coordinated my dinner plans around the start of this group. Made sure to show up in time to use the restroom, get a beverage and settle in. I did all the right (or write? haha) things...except I did them on the wrong week! This Group is meeting NEXT Thursday, not tonight. Ugh. And I could have stayed and enjoyed my dinner company longer!

So I had to make some decisions on how I was going to respond....normally I get so angry, bent out of shape, frustrated at myself for being so disorganized that I beat myself up and fall into a pit of self-imposed shame. But tonight, I tried something different, tonight I shrugged it off and got to writing on my own anyway. As a result, both this blog post AND journal entry were borne. This is still very rough, so forgive me, but please also give me some feedback if you'd like:

For this journal entry, we're going to dive into the imperfections that lie within you; your ability to make mistakes, your responses/reactions to them, and the impact of both the mistake and your response has on you. Let's get started.

Think back throughout your life and list three different mistakes you made:
1) A small, inconsequential mistake:
2) A medium mistake, perhaps with some consequence:
3) A major mistake, maybe with major consequence:

What impact did each of this mistakes have on you/your life in both the short and long term?
1) (small mistake)
2) (medium mistake)
3) (major mistake)

What was your response to each:
1) (small mistake)
2) (medium mistake)
3) (major mistake)

What fueled each of these responses? Is this how you normally respond or react to your mistakes? What informed or influenced the way you respond to your own mistakes (think way back if you need to) ?

How do these mistakes and your responses to them reflect on you?

Would you respond the same today? What about in 10 years?

How would you *like* to respond to mistakes you make in the future?

A Spring Awakening!

I think it is safe to say that we are in the midst of a cold and bleak winter. Locally, temperatures have not risen above freezing in probably two weeks and many of those days we've fluctuated between zero and 15. That does not even factor in windchill, or "real feel" as some call it.


And so I sit at the table in my dining room, gazing out the four-panel bay-window onto my seemingly barren peach trees...trees that I know will show signs of life soon enough. But today, they look dead. They are grey and brittle. As the wind blows across their limbs, they give their own shiver in protest of the arctic assault thrust upon them. Yet in their roots--in their soul--they, too, know they are just in a period of regeneration; a time of self-care, if you will.


I reflect back on my own life at the times I thought I was stagnant and dead...and now I realize I was simply in a period of rest and hibernation. I may have appeared "dead" to myself and to the world but come the spring of my life...man oh man was it a glorious rebirth!

The most obvious time of metaphoric death for me was after my dad and grandma died. One suddenly and one to cancer. I was catatonic for a year. But then I woke up once the ground became warm that spring. I became a parent, enrolled in massage school and exited a career I'd enjoyed for almost two decades. What a rebirth!


Only in hindsight and perspective am I able to see I needed that long winter of rest and dormancy in order to store up the energy for the next stage of growth.


I share this because some of you may be in that same "winter" of life. You may feel dead and stagnant but you're not. May I invite you to shift your perspective that you're in a period of dormancy (not stagnation or death), storing up energy for your spring awakening. Are you ready? I am!



...or, at least that's my 26.2 cents worth, anyway.

~Donald Taylor, Jr.~