Here I am on the first day of a new blog challenge, wondering what the heck I will write about for 30 days straight. The last time, I did the Ultimate Blog Challenge (UBC), I focused on one of my favorite topics – books and reading. By honing in on my reading life, I now know my likes and dislikes. I created good habits to get the most out of my books. I broke some bad habits and can easily identify what I want my reading life to look like going forward. In short, it was a reinvention of one of my favorite past times
This month, I’m planning to dive into a much larger and deeply personal topic – reinventing myself and what that means for the next chapter of my life and writing career. I’ve done this several times over. It isn’t an easy process, but always a worthwhile one.
The title of my blog is not just a title – for me, it’s a way of life without any sort of manual. I always do my very best. I succeed. I fail. I make mistakes. I learn from them, and I move on. This ongoing evolution began in full force in my formative years as an often bullied and woefully unpopular caterpillar in middle school and high school. Back then, I reinvented myself into a much more confident butterfly in college. So much so that some people didn’t recognize me at my high school reunion. Talk about a metamorphosis!
From there, I went from being a single young adult and budding writer to a wife, mother, and career woman. And then – before I knew it – I turned 50 this past year. It was quite a milestone in many ways. I’m learning to say yes to the things I want and no to everything else. As an inherent people-pleaser, this is no easy task. But in doing so, I am taking a pause to make more intentional decisions about what I want and where to go from here.
This seems like as good of a time as any to reflect on these things. After all, at the end of this coming school year, I will be an empty nester which comes with a host of emotions. Some of them I’m already experiencing like sadness, nostalgia, and nausea. Others will come out of left field. And all I know is that as I get older, I still find myself in situations where I don’t know what to do. The difference now is that I might be expected to know because I have all of this life experience behind me. But the truth is, I’m still learning and growing, and reinventing myself – and that’s what I’ll explore this month through my blog posts.
Care to join me? Whether you are my age or have reinvented yourself at any stage of your life, I hope you find something that resonates with you here. Please share your comments with me, and I promise to reply One of the best things about writing is sharing my stories and then listening to and learning from other people’s experiences. I hope you will share yours with me. And if you don’t have anything to say but like what you’ve read – a simple thumbs up on Facebook works just as well. It helps me tremendously to know when something I’ve written resonates with you. Writing can be lonely sometimes. Hitting “publish” and posting these posts is my attempt at being brave and expressing myself. Your support means the world to me and keeps me going.
I’d love to hear from you!
XOXO
Elisa
When we bought this house, I remember thinking this will make for a nice starter home. We hadn’t started our family yet, and I thought this was the perfect size house to begin our lives together. It’s a split-level home with three bedrooms on a quarter acre of land in a nice, quiet street in a pretty neighborhood. At the time, I thought we would grow into something larger and with a basement.
A few nights ago, I was ready to give up on the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I had six posts left to write in three days, and I didn’t think I had it in me to finish. I proclaimed my defeat to my son, who looked at me and said, “I’m not going to let you do that, mom. You have to finish what you started.”