Whatever I want to write, from now on

This blog started when I wanted to share my experience with friends who lost their home to a fire. I had another blog up until that day, but I felt as though it was too much about things that had run their course and chapters that were closed. I needed a fresh start.

Over the years, this blog has taken a lot of different twists and turns. I've written about my life as a single mom and as a newly married woman starting over. I've written about friendships found (and lost), about faith and dark nights of the soul. I've written about lessons learned with grace, and those learned in pain. For the most part, I wrote from the heart, not worrying about who followed or who shared my posts.

Then I became a "professional blogger" in my work life. And suddenly, I started worrying about reach and SEO and engagement. My writing here became more self-conscious, more strained. And I wrote less. Then I felt guilty about the lapses -- which made me feel guiltier. So I wrote even less. My blog, my way of sharing my world, had become a chore.

And yet, here I am. Back on the pages of This, That and the Other. Writing. Because I need to write. I need this outlet to share the things that don't belong on my professional, image-focused, SEO'd blogs.

I thought about starting a new blog for this new start. But somehow, like a familiar old pair of jeans, I wanted to use a setting that was well broken-in. I wanted to write where I had already written about the beauty and pain and joy and fear and hopes in my life.

So world, I am back. Without concerns about SEO or followers or share rates. I am contemplating moving the whole blog, complete with content from day one, to another platform. And that might happen soon. But regardless of the backend, the home will still be the same. I'm back, world. And ready to write.

To Everything There is a Season...and Sometimes That Means New Blogs

Austin at Sunset ©Lindsay Shugerman 2011 All Rights Reserved

For now, my season is to be in Texas.  Sure, I'd rather be in Florida.  And I hope that things will work out so we can return home, sooner rather than later.  And I plan to make MANY, MANY trips home in the meantime, to see my friends and my family and my beloved places.

But I have to face facts.  For now I am here, in Austin.  And I can make myself miserable, or I can learn some new things, meet some new people, and work on myself while I'm here so that the person who returns home will be better, more interesting, more sure of herself and have greater depth than the person I was when I left.

This is hard for me.  If I find joy here, I feel like I'm being disloyal to home, and to those I left behind.  I worked hard to get back to Florida after so many years away.  I reconnected with those I had missed for so long, and I met new kindred spirits who also loved South Florida and called it home.

Sailing off Miami ©Lindsay Shugerman 2010 All Rights Reserved

But now I am in a place I do not love.  Where there are no precious memories or dear friends with whom I can reconnect.  I lived other places over the years...and each time, once the dust had settled, and the excitement of exploring a new city, a new state was past, that old familiar call home would begin.  But during those "honeymoon" days or weeks, I had built some connections, found some favorites in the new place.

This time, the excitement never happened.  So now I need to learn a new way to see the world, and my location.

No, it's not going to turn around over night. I will still be homesick, I will still call Florida "Home." But I need to work at finding some reason to like it here, even if "love it here" never happens.

One way I am going to try and make that happen is with some new blogs.  One, which I started in November, focuses on the details I see in the world.  That one will allow me to bring in images I've collected throughout my travels, as well as new things I find here.

The second one will be about Texas style in decorating.  I love texture and aged finishes, and if there's one thing Texas is excellent at, it's aging finishes.  Think of this blog as shabby-chic meets Texas practicality.  I am looking forward to working on that one.

The last one is a family project, and will be all about Austin and the surrounding area.  We've been working on that one, and are almost ready to launch.  By the way, if you're an Austin-area blogger, we will be looking for guest bloggers on that one.

I will still keep this blog, because this is where I share my thoughts, my joys and my sorrows.  I've been neglecting this blog because I was too sad to write, and got tired of seeing my own whining. So  I wrote and deleted, wrote and deleted, without ever hitting that publish button.  Time for that to end.

Watch for links to all three new blogs next week.

2011 -- A Bittersweet Goodbye

It's time to say goodbye to 2011.  And this year, it's a bit harder than usual to say so long to the old year.

It's not that it's been a good year...it's been difficult.  But there were some things in 2011 that are now gone forever, and that makes it hard to crack open the bottle of ginger ale and toast to the new year.

In January, my mom passed away.  Our relationship went from rocky to none, and we never got to say goodbye. She chose to not have me around at the end, and that remains incredibly painful almost a year later.   But even with all of that, I am sad that she will not be on the planet to see the arrival of 2012.  She did a lot of good for a lot of people in her lifetime, and it should have been longer. Knowing that 2011 was the last year she would see makes seeing it go even harder.

2011 also saw the passing of an uncle I had become close to after years of not seeing him,  I am grateful for the chance I got to finally live close enough to feel that we knew each other, but sad that the time was cut short.  He was great guy, with a dry but always ready sense of humor and a love for Hershey Chocolate bars and black licorice.  Like my mom, I wish he was around to great the new year,

2011 was supposed to be the first full year my new husband and I would have together...a chance to learn about each other and build our marriage.  Instead, he had to take a job out of state, while I remained in Florida to ready the house for renters and wait out the school year.  The result was 6 long, stressful months apart.  The coming together again was wonderful, but we are still recovering from each others absence and the unique stresses it caused for each of us.

And even the reunion was bittersweet, because it meant leaving behind my beloved home state of Florida, where I have dear friends, family and a lifetime of memories.  The move to Texas meant no more late night suppers on the patio of Flashback with Polly and Karen, no more snorkeling trips with Jimmy and the rest of JAC, no more lunches with friends from work who had become such dear friends, no more driving past my high school every day on the way to work, no more running into old friends at the grocery store, the mall or a concert.  Yes, change can be good, it's also difficult when it's not chosen.

So forgive me, 2012, if I don't greet you with open arms and a cheerful countdown.  I need to hold on to every last minute of what will never be after 2011 fades away. 

Happy 5771!

I've been offline for a couple of days because of the flu and the holiday. It is Rosh Hashanah, so we spent yesterday in Temple at services, and then at my MIL's house last night for a delicious holiday dinner.

For those of you not familiar with the Jewish High Holidays, it shares some aspects with the secular New Year, in that we focus on doing better in the year to come. But it also has things that don't exist in the secular version.

We focus on forgiveness. On asking for it, and for giving it. And those requests are made to the people we may have hurt or offended in the past year. Sure, we ask G-d for mercy, but we have to deal with the people first. Otherwise, it's just taking the easy way out. And that doesn't count.

We also have a tradition that says that between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (which is a week from tomorrow), G-d writes our fate for the upcoming year -- who will live and die, who will succeed and fail, and such.

But there is a very Buddhist concept, tied up in the traditional Jewish message, that I am just learning. While we cannot change the heavenly decree, we can and are instructed to work on ourselves, through prayer and charity and learning, so that we can react better to the problems we may face (or even the blessings we may encounter.) It's so similar to the Buddhist idea that while suffering is an inevitable part of life, how we deal with the suffering either adds to or reduces the pain we feel. We have a choice.

I love it when I find yet another way that the great faiths of this world unite and intersect!

So to those who celebrate the High Holidays, and to those who do not, I want to share my wish for all of you. I hope that this year is....

A year of joy and prosperity....
A year of growth and learning....
A year of health....
A year of new opportunities to discover your path....
A year of gaining the skills and perspective to deal with the "downs" in life's ups and downs....
A year of exciting beginnings....
A year of satisfying endings...
A year to take at least one more step to knowing who you are...

Namaste. L'shana tova!

Dream house? Why not?

The other day, I posted a link to my dream house on my Facebook wall. It's a beautiful home in Boulder. The view?  Well, you can see the view.  Perfect. Just perfect.

So why did I post it?  It's not that I have $2 million in the bank, and can buy it today.  I posted it because I could at some point, have 2 million in the bank.  Or 10 million. Who knows? I posted it because it's good to dream, and to remind ourselves what it is we dream about.

It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day, focusing only on meetings at work, the grocery shopping list and what the kids need to do for homework.  Days, weeks, months or even years can pass by without us lifting up our heads (or our hearts) long enough to look at where we're going in life -- or remembering where we want to go. Some people forget their dreams for decades, only to realize one day, maybe when this life is almost over, what they once wanted to do and be but never got around to trying.

So here is my challenge for you today.  Take some time and think about something you want.  Something you dreamed about.  Make it a big dream. It could be a trip you wanted to take.  A degree you wanted to complete. Or a house on a mountain side you wanted to own. Find a picture that represents your dream, and post it somewhere.  On your wall, your door, your bulletin board or your Facebook wall. Tell the world what you dream about.  And then -- and here is the really important part -- tell yourself about it. Feel it. Dream it. Make it real, and see it happening.  Dare to challenge the universe -- and yourself -- to make it happen.

Dreams do come true.  But first you have to have the dream.  Happy dreaming!

I've lived in a thousand houses

Growing up in Fl. with family in NJ and PA meant annual road trips up north to visit the family.

Yes, sometimes we flew, but more often than not, we would make it into a three-day-each way journey, complete with stops in Savannah to eat dinner at the Pirate House, a furniture shopping stop in North Carolina, and a visit to the tacky-but-irresistible South of the Border tourist trap.

But one of my most treasured memories of those long days in the car was looking at the houses we passed and creating stories about the people who lived there.

It could just be a fleeting glance as we sped past. I would memorize the color of the door, the front porch, the windows as we came up to a house, went in front of it, and drove on. If we stopped in front of a house, for a light or traffic, I would gather even more information for my story. The flowers. The fence. The swing set. Or the absence of all of those. Then the story would start.

I would begin by imagining that the house was mine. It was the place I came home to each day after school. With just that brief view in my head, I would image walking up to the door, seeing the porch, hearing my footsteps as I walked across the wood or concrete or dirt or stones that led up to the door. I would see the door in my mind, imagine reaching for the knob. Try to gather up how I felt coming home here. Happy? Sad? Hopeful? Scared?

Then I would picture walking inside. The light. The colors. The furniture and the pictures on the wall. The sounds and smells. Who would be there? I would imagine my family-of-that-house. Their names and who they were. Were they home when I got home? Or was the house empty? I would picture my room. Did I have a room to myself, or did I share. What did the bed feel like to lie in at night?

I was too young or too innocent to imagine that horrors could happen in any of my imaginary homes. I could picture sadness or even fear, but not terror.

I would go through a day and night in that house in my imagination, seeing myself as the person who lived there, maybe of a different skin color or religion or language, but always somehow still enough me to recognize. And always a girl.

Once I had exhausted one house in my imagination, I would pick another. I would look ahead and see it coming up, start to gather the details in my mind as it got closer.

I never wrote down any of those stories. But it was clear from those early trips that I was destined to be a writer. Those trips prepared me to live in other skins and see through other eyes.

I seldom get to spend much time on my imaginary homes these days (I am usually behind the wheel, driving my kids), but when I get a chance to be a passenger, I do find my old game coming back. And the other day, my youngest daughter told me from the backseat -- "Mama, when I see people out walking or in a store, sometimes I imagine that what it's like to be them." Another writer is born!