I take upon myself this challenge.

Did anyone notice that in 2007, I had 101 blog posts? Well, I did. I also noticed that in 2009 I had 39. That says something to me, especially in the light of my last post.

It seems that in 2007, I did A LOT of whining. Well, whining, complaining, venting, and so forth; mostly negative things.

Today before we left for church I found an old notebook of mine that I haven't looked at in over 3 years. Inside I found a bit of a treasure, for on about seven pages was a very basic rundown of my life, as written by the 2004 me. This outline was preceded by a diet/weight loss plan and objectives. It is obvious that I was trying to talk myself into action. And then I wrote this:

"I can ask myself 'important questions' all day long - but it changes nothing. Let's instead recognize the times that changed my life."

Then I began at birth and did numbers, letters and bullet points for various people and events in my life, often footnoted by comments like "poetry began," or "@ 8 saw Mom as Guenevere." I pinpointed the very age when I began to dream of writing and publishing my very own book. "True exaggeration for attention began" when I was 9. I noted that catching a lizard was important to my development and growth. Event listed as #11: "First sign of fear," followed by "True anger came out." Yoda was right: fear leads to anger.

I have recorded when I first heard and felt the difference between the Spirit and those who would impersonate the spirit. I figured out why my first real relationship failed and summed it up beautifully: "Why did J.R.R. fail? I held back."

And then I read the line that deeply spoke to me today. At # 31: "Developed 'introverted creative melancholy.'"

It was around that time in my life that I figured that there were more ways to describe sadness, and that sadness had a sort of accessible beauty to it. So many people could read my sadness and say, "Yes, I felt that way too, once." I also feared that I didn't know happiness well enough to write about it.

What I didn't understand was that happiness in my life is like oxygen. It's always everywhere. It exists for no other reason than to be taken in by me. If I hold my breath, hold on to one particular happiness: eventually I suffocate myself. If I exhale a happiness and never want to replace what I just let out, I will suffocate myself. And on the other extreme, if I breath it in day in and day out and never acknowledge it, whose fault is it that I do not see happiness? I totally get that now, because every day I employ my agency and take in my happiness, savoring it's sweet flavor!

I have past said that "I am essentially a happy woman," or "I am content." Those comments seem to have the caveat that I have not been or will not always be so. No more of that garbage. I will just come out and say the truth: I battle depression. I have a tendancy, spurred on by sugar and food abuse, to over-react to bodily sensations and misinturpret them as sadness or un-happiness. But if you ask me "Are you happy?" My answer will be "Yes." because even though I may not feel happy, I AM happy.

I'm not sure why I gave up writing after I got married/after I finished with school. I have not yet pinpointed what drove me to share and create less and less with the written word over the last two years. But I am deciding NOW that I will open myself up to the random creativity I enjoyed years ago. Random creativity that produced my heartbreakingly honest short story "What She Deserved," or random bits of verse like this:

"Down the page columns go
hopes and dreams come and go
Here today, tomorrow gone
What will stay number one?
Ev'ry day changes come
once a child - then a home
Love or fame, beauty bloom
Safe above sorrow's doom
Darker days where goals will change
open wide the shifting range."

Did anyone say I have to be Auden or T.S. Elliot? No. I have made similar declarations before. Perhaps some of my readers are tired of hearing me sing the same songs, as it were. So I am going to challenge myself.

I will begin writing the Book of Sayyadina. I will leave pieces of paper in my wake, scribbled and inked with my thoughts and creations. In fact, I will blog a blog twice a week. Wow. That is scary to put out there. I can do it though, right? Heck yeah. Bad, good, happy, sad . . . I have risked these emotions before and carry no fatal wounds for the sharing. Okay. I'm going to do this. Here's to more than 101 in 2010!!!