Behind a Tree

If I'm not careful, I will fall into the same rut with this blog that I have during the past 10 years or so with my handwritten journals--I'll simply forget to write in it, and after awhile, it will cease to matter. Actually, entire stretches of time can seem that way--as though they don't matter. But truth is, they do, and it is during those stretches of inactivity that I feel the guiltiest, because I am not doing what I feel I should be doing, and that is writing.


In all honesty, I don't know many writers. In fact, I know very few, and I've never been privileged enough to know any serious writer that intimately...the type of writer who writes no matter what, when writing is the last thing that he or she wants to do, the type who won't survive if he or she doesn't write, in both an economic and a spiritual sense. As with so much else in my life, I only have my own experiences to go by, so that I can't know if or when other writers come up against walls like this, and because they feel that it's not going anywhere, they simply stop. Am I behind a tree again, such as the one an old college professor of mine told me once that I have tendency to get stuck behind? "When you're behind that tree," he said, "you stop, and you look around it, but you don't go any further." Is that where I am right now, behind a tree, looking around but not daring to move past it for fear of what lies beyond it, again???
It's not really such a bad place to be...behind a tree. I love trees, and I feel safe when I'm near one, especially one of those giant ones that has been here for what seems like forever. And other than during a lightning storm, what better place IS there to be than behind a tree?


That, in itself, is an interesting concept. For how does one actually end up BEHIND a tree? Does a tree have sides, a front, a back? And how does one know which is which, which is the front, or the back, or the side? I've just always perceived trees as having bottoms and tops. I've never seen trees as having sides, fronts or backs. So in effect, whenever I seem to be behind one, I may very well be in front of it, or at least on the side, so that the way before me is clear and unobstructed. And no matter where I'm standing with regards to the tree, it really doesn't matter in the end, for no matter where I start moving away from it, I will be moving in a new and unexplored direction.


So once again, it's more of a case of simply taking that first step, as it has so often been in my life...that first step...often the hardest of all to take as I move away from my comforting and protective tree toward the unknown...


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/