My life has recently been taken over by a thousand-headed benevolent hydra, and each head has its own ideas about what I should be doing.
This is the whirlpool of adventure I've fallen into - fallen because it's unplanned, whirlpool because I don't seem to have control over what happens and adventure because it is both frustrating and thrilling.
I've spent decades sensing alternative life on the other side of safe but I've always been too scared to go over and check it out. Is there anything as enfeebling as fear of the unknown?
https://steemitimages.com/400x208/https://https://imgur.com/subM2SC
What's finally given me the push is loss. Pain can, if you let it, suffocate and drown you. It can pile up. Or it can give you purpose and direction.
For years I felt the smothering waters rising up. The growing weight of unfulfilled dreams dragged me lower, slowing and surrounding me with its dampening presence.
Was this going to be the epitaph of my life, that my existence would be notable only because it was extinguished by loss?
No. No. No.
The answer took long to form, but form it eventually did.
The conscious decision that life is worth living changes your view of everything. If a broken chair was a piece of garbage, it now becomes reparable or recyclable or a piece of art. Opportunities that celebrate life begin to bloom effortlessly like the multiplying craniums of the compassionate and enabling hydra. They compete to prove this to you. When you attempt to disregard one, it shrinks and withers only to blossom into several more.
It's not about forgetting that life is hard, but you understand that what matters most is what you do with it, what you do with what you have.
Writing's been the topic of plenty of whispers from the other side of the curtain for as long as I can remember. I've dithered on the edge of starting for decades but now I'm diving in.
I'm new to blogging, totally ignorant about crypto-currencies, clueless about social media despite two years of trying to understand it and extraordinarily green in a lot of things including what is probably going to be a a frequent subject in my posts, social entrepreneurship, the theme of some of the loudest murmurs emanating from behind those drapes.
Thanks to the hydra, I'll also explore other topics I am equally less informed about and equally grateful to have the chance to discover. The environment, life, nature, writing, community, books...if each head represents one subject, it appears that there may be a lot to write about.
I'd like to thank the person who heard about @Steemit and told me about it. Those blooming heads are everywhere. They echo the sounds in the shades.
Will both ever stop talking? I don't know.
What I do know is that, right now, I'm walking over to life.