{building}

i have always placed great emphasis on days like new year, new moons and such like. always looking for the new opportunity to start again. when i was 18 i nearly joined the church of jesus christs and the latter days saints merely because i liked idea, after baptism, i would be "borne again". embarassingly i've been told (and i genuinely don't remember this) when i first moved out and had to do my laundry i was known to get rid of dirty clothes instead of washing them! even in my short bloglife span, i've tried no less that 5 blog reincarnations!

but i guess the signs were there early on. when i was in school, my exercise books were always thinner than most because i would rip out the pages and painstakingly rewrite pages and pages of text most evenings. simply because i had changed my handwriting or the ink i used. and i wanted, needed, my entire book to reflect the new look. new style. new me. i didn't want ugly reminders of what i used to be...

recently i was walking along with a friend of mine telling her how we were thinking about moving again and i even jokingly said to her, "it's funny how our desire to move usually always appears when the house is looking a mess". but then it hit me. it's true. the house. the exercise books. my blog. the church! whenever i am feeling disillusioned. disenchanted. discontent. disappointed... my idea of dealing with it is quite simply to erase it. start again.

now, on some levels this is great. and i think it's only because of this ability to start again, we've coped with some of the unavoidable changes recently (my dad's passing, my mother's 3 strokes...)

but our strength can also be our weakness and, just as it's been my primal source of survival, it's also inhibited me in many ways. something i've only just connected the dots to.

the moment something doesn't quite work out the way my mind's eye had envisioned; if at all possible, i just start again. but this is not in the perseverance sense, but rather, in the perpetual beginner sense. i say perpetual, because it is inevitably something i return to time and time again. but because each time i struggle i give up and move on to something else, by the time i come back, i am a beginner again. and so the whole cycle perpetuates. that is where 5 years worth of scrapbooks lie, the 6 novels, and countless paintings. all fragile beginnings, snuffed out before they ever had an opportunity to mature, grow and develop...

but recognising a problem is the first step towards dealing with it. and as i felt the teasing breath of change in the air tonight. i am fighting the urge to just start again. instead i am going to build on what there already is. begin again maybe, but this time building on the foundations i've already laid. i've spent 35 years laying foundations (in fact unwittingly, it was my magic word last year!) it's time to do something with them. no more foundations now. we're moving up another level!

so would it be too late to change my word for 2009? because i truly feel what it should be now...
build.
because that is what i need to, starting now.