A fellow blogger tweeted yesterday about how reading old blog posts is like flipping through old journals. I was doing the same thing the other day and I completely agree! While Get Natured is only a little under a year and a half old, I have been blogging for over six years (before Get Natured there was my Allibrew blog). Over the years I have found my voice and become a better photographer. I have met and been inspired by so many awesome people online. I have grown as a human.
I will occasionally be republishing old posts from Allibrew because I think they are helpful or they contain a message that I want to share here. I'll start with one of my very first reflections on blogging from way back in 2005!
Cultivating Life
(Originally published Feb 26, 2005)
As I was sowing seeds for my garden today, I was reflecting on the metaphor that it presented. As I carefully and delicately placed the seeds in the soil, I was imagining the future of the garden. How could these tiny seeds become a vegetarian bounty to share with friends and family? How fantastic it is that the plants that will grow from these seeds will produce so much more these little flecks! Without soil, water, sunlight, and maybe a little love, the garden would never come to be. Now that they have been planted, the seeds have a new beginning today. They will carry forward their genetics and they will become plants as healthy as the ones that they came from and a product of their new and ever-changing environment.
Somewhere, in the midst of my reflection, it occurred to me that my blog is following a similar path. There are tiny seeds of contemplation dwelling in my soul. Holding onto these thoughts creates a quiet fear of losing them. It is as though they become something valuable and necessary as soon as they arise. With this blog as my plot, I’m able to plant the seeds and alleviate the subtle urgency to free them. I am, no doubt, tempted to reach into the past to attempt the retrieval of ideas gone by. Some of them are free floating in the back of my mind but they change shape and completely lose their magic when I try to bring them forward. Others are actually captured in the volumes of my old journals.
Recently, thinking that I had a beautiful story hidden in my past, I scoured my treasured journals. One journal, in particular, was my travel companion everywhere that I went in 1992 and 1993. Recalling some of the magnificent prose that I had captured in these things that I once held so dear, I went on a hunt for the contents of my first book. What I discovered was that they held nothing more than the average story of a mystified girl.
When I put the journals back in the box where I keep them, I also let go of the assignment that I was holding over my own head- no book is contained in those pages. They hold only chapters that provide proof that I hadn’t captured what mattered to me. I guess that’s my blog resolution of sorts- to connect to me and to document my exploration. Bon voyage!
