When I started this blog I was so gung ho.  I thought this would change my life.  I thought I’d finally found the philosophy that would set me on a new path.  Like a lot of people who have indulged in magical thinking in the past, I thought simply creating a blog called Settling for More, would instantly help me learn how to do that.  I thought making a change would be as easy as stating my intent.  By now, I’ve realized, as many of you may have realized, that simply starting a blog and stating an intent doesn’t make it so.

Truth be told, I never really knew what this blog was supposed to be.  I knew I wanted, and still want, to change my life.  I wanted to jettison the chains that I felt were holding me back, chains formed of memory, and a mind that wouldn’t let me forget every hurt I’d done or every hurt that had been done to me.   I’d stored up all the slights and digs and doubts and forged them into this shield that I thought would protect me from everything.  In reality, it protected me from nothing, except perhaps the stuff that had the potential to make me happy.

Because I didn’t know what this blog should be, it has mostly languished these last few months.   I couldn’t tell the truth here, the truth being that I had big goals but I was afraid to pursue them, and I didn’t want to lie, so I didn’t say anything, except that I was too busy or I had other claims on my time, all of which were true and lies at the same time.  I can make time when I want to,  but telling the truth seemed to hard, and lies seemed to shameful.  Silence was the easier and, to me at least, more honest option.

Given that this is a new year, and given that I still want to change, I figured the beginning days of 2010 were a good time to start as I mean to go on.  That means telling the truth instead of avoiding it. That means setting goals I can live with, even if they aren’t as ambitious as I’d like them to be.  That means calling a spade a spade and accepting that I don’t always do as well as I would like, but I’m a good person anyway.  That means making mistakes, absolving myself of them and moving on, without the mistake clanking behind me like another link in the chain of my failure.

I’m not sure I can do this.  I’m not even sure I want to do this.  Telling the truth, my truth, has never been something I was particularly good at doing.  Keeping quiet and staying low always seemed safer.  Despite that fact, or maybe because of it, I’ve come to realize that no one much cares what I think, and that keeping quiet and staying low won’t get me to where I want and need to be.   I created the outlet when I created this blog.

Now I just have to make use of it.