I’ve hit a bit of a dry spell lately – not so much because I have nothing to say as much as I have a lot of things going on at the moment.  I feel a bit bad because I know that I have some faithful readers who “tune in” every morning and it’s been several days since there was something fresh.  And also, I miss writing! 

In June when I was getting ready to go to Colorado and wanting to put together a more polished trip log than I had for my previous travels, I started looking at the blog format.  I read a LOT of blogs and some were truly scary in content – corny, too “all about me” – generally just not appealing to me.  And the whole blog thing seemed a bit too much one of those things that everyone was doing and I hate the whole “following the crowd” thing.  But the more I looked, the more the blog format seemed to fit what I wanted to do as far as documenting travel and general writing about things going on with me.  So, read some more, picked WordPress for my blog “vehicle” and it didn’t go so well.  I struggled to get WordPress installed on my existing host and with all of the things that needed to be done to leave – I was ready to bail and put up a simple web page.

In the past, friends that I email have said I should write a book – that they enjoyed my writing.  But at the time I was thinking of not pursuing the blog I was given some special encouragement and in addtion to the source, it was the words: “You have a gift, use it.”  We rarely see our own gifts, talents or beauty.  Thank God that others see with both eyes and heart – the beauty that we cannot.  And the second part of that is that we must trust in the people that care for us and believe in what they see in us.

Those words – “you have a gift, use it” carried enormous power.  They were more command than suggestion.  It was strong motivation and things suddenly came together for “From the Front Porch”.  And not only has it been a joy to write, it is a joy to hear from everyone who reads.  Something special has happened to me through writing these entries.  I often start with an idea of where I’m going and find that I end up someplace I did not anticipate – what fun!  It is a grand adventure for me as I learn things about myself that I didn’t know.  I think the real gift is being open to new thoughts and ideas and allowing the writing to happen.  Ultimately it has been an incredible ride so far.