Update
In error, I posted this piece twice and people have commented on each one. I do not want to delete one of the posts, thereby deleting comments.
I think about this blog a lot. Daily. When I am out walking, or driving alone in my car. I wonder when I first started writing it, and reflect on how so many subjects of my life, thought processes, or the course of my emotional development have featured here in this public forum. Indeed, the sub-title of this blog is "my diagnosis of me," and I have certainly been on a self-exploration journey with it.
My blog has been my companion through some very painful emotional times these past four years. It has served as a connection to the outside world when I felt abandoned and alone. Indeed, here on this blog I was able to work through and confront some key psychological barriers that were really opened up for me with Bob-the-therapist back in my Buffalo days.
This ever-so-personal, while also extremely public, format helped me improve my writing skills, enabling me to complete a second book, and an edited collection of essays.
In short, this blog has supported my personal, social, and professional growth in ways that I could never have imagined. I am ever grateful for it. Now, however, I feel I have reached a cross roads of some kind. At the very least I think I have to find a different purpose for this blog - perhaps even a name or site change - if I am to continue at all. For, if I want social Internet connection, or to keep friends and family updated about my life, Facebook has become a perfectly satisfactory venue for that! Personal ruminations of one kind or another are suitable for my private journal writing, and in any case, I have been thinking about writing a memoir at some stage.
Turning sixty has had a major impact on me. I feel emotionally opened, grounded in a different reality, and at the same time, free to be all I can be. For example, one of the things I have been thinking about since I turned sixty is that I do not seem to need as much emotional support or acknowledgment as I did when I was younger. It is almost as if I am finally able to give up my old longing for parents. Indeed, I am able to parent myself! I have allowed myself to become an adult. So many of those ancient, unrealistic, and adolescent or childish expectations I had of significant people in my life have dissolved and gone away. I seem able to meet others in an emotionally mutual space, where I feel equal and more confident in who I am.
Perhaps I could name my new blog (if I decide to continue blogging) something to do with being in my sixties.
Hm ... more to think about!
A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Went away ... and - More hats ...
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Hello Josephine,
Thank you so much for your supportive comment! How nice to meet you here. I will soon be writing posts again - this is just a temporary time-out as I work out what I want to continue writing about :-)
Comments like yours certainly encourage me to continue!
Posted by: tamarika | August 31, 2009 at 06:27 PM
I am sad to see you leave blogging. You were such an excellent article writer. You always look like you had such a fun life. You were an inspiration to me and my mother. I hope you return someday
Posted by: Josephine Pizarro | August 31, 2009 at 05:37 PM
Dear Jean,
A dear friend you are - truly - from the beginning of our Cyber journey! I agree with you about turning our feelings in upon our own minds and bodies. I have discovered all sorts of mind body connections during this past year's weight loss work. Indeed, it has been quite a therapeutic exploration! And I just keep on learning more and more about how "i" function. Fascinating stuff.
Thanks so much for your kind words. I appreciate your still reading me and commenting. Readership and comments, in particular, had decreased, there is no doubt about that. But, as MaryB, said in her comment http://tamarika.typepad.com/mined_nuggets/2009/08/reviewing-the-situation.html?cid=6a00d83451fd9b69e20120a551d424970c#comment-6a00d83451fd9b69e20120a551d424970c there is much contentment in writing for oneself when one gets past the expectation of other readers.
I'll be looking out for you (always do...) and keeping in touch too.
Thanks so much for always being there. Indeed you have been there through some of my darkest hours!
Hugs and smiles from afar.
Posted by: tamarika | August 20, 2009 at 06:17 AM