I’ve Got Something to Celebrate

Today, I have something to celebrate.

And that something is my persistence with this blog.

Last year, on my 70^th birthday, as a present, and as a challenge to myself, I resolved to post here once a week without fail.

And I did it, except for Thanksgiving. 

I did miss Thanksgiving. But to my credit, I forgave myself and moved on.

Am I proud of myself for these 51 posts? Damn straight I am!

Was it hard?

 Yes and no. 

In the beginning it was quite hard because this blog has never had a theme or a niche.

Some bloggers write exclusively about food, or parenting, or travel, but I don’t have a particular go-to thing that I always write about.

I do write about yoga a lot, but I write about other things, too. 

Initially, I called this blog Inspiration Location because my idea then was to live on the hunt for inspiring people, places, and ideas. Then, when I found them, this blog would be the place I would report my findings

That was my idea fifteen years ago. But it fizzled out pretty quickly. 

So when I recommitted to writing here regularly last year, my secret hope was to discover my niche.

And, happily, in the past few months, I have understood what I do here. 

And what I do here is: 

I notice things.

As a person, I try to live my life intentionally and then pay attention to what I’m paying attention to.

As a writer, I then use my daily free write sessions in either Scrivener or in my paper notebooks to sketch out and dive more deeply into these noticings. 

Then, each week, I pick one idea to polish up and showcase in that week’s blog.

Tomorrow, I will be 71. It feels weird to write that. And by weird I mean not possible. 

In one way, I am sad that it has taken me this long to understand myself: what I want to do and who I am. And in another way, I am excited to launch a new writing project in a few weeks, one more in alignment with who I am as a writer and a person. 

In a few weeks, I will be leaving Inspiration Location. I’ve been writing here, on and off, for fifteen years. I have posted over eight hundred blog posts and have over forty thousand views. But I have never found my tribe here, and I don’t know why. Partly I think it’s because of WordPress’s policy of making people create an account in order to comment. And partly, it’s my reticence in promoting it. 

I will be moving my writing to Substack.  I have been lurking on that site for the past year and love it there! There are so many wonderful writers with amazing newsletters I read and engage with. I feel a huge affinity with that tribe, and I hope you will follow me when I migrate there. 

Rest assured, I will post here all the how-tos of how you can do that if you want to. 

Thank you for reading Inspiration Location all these years if you have been a regular reader and subscriber. I hope that once you see how easy it is to engage with me on Substack, you will! And we can become friends and fellow noticers of our intentionally lived lives! 

Namaste and love. See you next week!

Kath