I have seen so many ways a blog can be used. Personal, experimental, promotional. Pick a theme, pick a topic, pick an area of expertise. As for me, I have a few other blogs for other reasons, and I’m not sure if I should transfer them all over here, or if I should simply provide links for them. Maybe start with the latter and contemplate the former for another day.

I’ve decided, for now, I will use this blog for thoughts on writing, on creating, on book reviews, too. I’m in a book club, focused on diversity and various groups in our world, and it would be nice to have a place to review the books we read. Maybe even include a few examples of various forms of writing that I can practice? This will be more about writing and words and the other blogs will be my writing. How does that sound? At least, let’s start with that.

So, if you want to read various pieces of my writing over the years, there are four blogs to check out:

This one – on the Pilgrimage – is my oldest. I began this one in 2004, my first venture into the world of blogging. They are various entries loosely around spirituality and the human journey.

This one – Reel Reflections – is where I share my thoughts on the arts; primarily movies, TV shows, and stage productions that I attend. Things we see. I love the visual arts, and examining them is a joy for me. It is also a place I can practice my critical writing analysis. In addition, it has long been a tradition to view as many of the Academy Award Nominees for Best Picture every year and then make my guess for the big 6 possible winners. This is where I would review and comment on the films. My writing in it began in 2015, and if you want to know my thoughts on various visual pieces, this is where I shall share. Especially at the time of Oscars!

This one – My Challenge to New Life – is my place for challenging myself: for setting a goal to do something for a set number of days, and showing up to do it. For example, if you search back to November 10, 2014, I began a new experiment there. I had mixed success, but that is where it began. The goal was to use the prompts from a book I have (I will list it in the resources) to take the prompt for the day, set my timer to 20 minutes, and write whatever comes for that time. You can see the parameters I set for myself on that day. Every subsequent day from there, to December 26 (46 days), I wrote every day. I think I was supposed to write for 50, so I’m not sure what happened. You can see other challenges I did along the way – gratitude challenges, writing challenges, etc. The point is – this is the blog that I hoped would keep me accountable. Generally, if you see something that seems to be part of the challenge, search back to see where I begin the challenge, as it will also explain the parameters of the challenge.

This one – Navel Gazing, Star Gazing, and *GMST – is probably the most active and where I do random things that come through my day around which I want to form a cohesive thought. This can be anything, from an event in my life to something I observed to concepts I want to wrap my brain around. They can be cultural or personal, political or relational … whatever is part of the human journey and topics for the day might be in here. The thing is that it is my human journey. But I do try to take one topic and ‘take it to the page’ for each entry. This one has more current writings; I started it in 2016 and it has recent writings as well. I did move many spiritual ones to on the Pilgrimage and will keep this sprinkled with spiritual thoughts but mostly on other aspects of life. Like I claim in the title: it’s purpose is to GMST – Get My Sh** Together!

There is one more on the peripheral but I have yet to link it here. This one will focus on being an Elder Orphan, how to be purposeful and positive, and how to prepare for life with those conditions. This one will be a very personal blog as I wrestle with my future and what this means for me. More on that later.

I know they all need cleaning of sorts … I have them but I haven’t done much over the years with them. Just the occasional adding along the way. I guess we’ll see how this blog and my others evolve. Now, at least, I have everything mentioned in one place. And I can plan my writing from there.

In the movie, The Godfather, there is a line that says: “No more meetings, no more discussions, no more Sollozzo tricks. You give ’em one message: I want Sollozzo. If not, it’s all-out war: we go to the mattresses.” That expression – go to the mattresses – is an expression that means “it’s war” or “adopt a war-like stance” or “to act without restraint”. The actual expression refers to sleeping on mattresses during conflict because they have to stay in hideouts and not beds. For me, I have adopted this and turned it into “take it to the page” or “go to the page.” For me, when I need to wrestle with something, when I need to bring all my swirling thoughts into something cohesive and focused, I take it to the page. I wrestle it through with words. I take my thoughts on this and go to the page and fight it out so that it makes sense. In a way, too, this is where the title of my website comes from. We think better through writing. Maybe I’ll start my blog here, with a development of where the title of my site comes from.

It’s time to return to the page!