The cyber doctors have worked their magic on my blog and it is back up and running.  I still don’t know how it was attacked but Google shut it down as infectious.  It is good and fully approved now with added defenses. MY BLOG WAS STILL BLOCKED FOR SOME SO I AM REPOSTING IT HERE.
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I wondered if it could not be repaired, would I do what is necessary to start a new one?  It is a good question as I come to the end of the year.  Every once in awhile we should stop and check in on the things we do and why we do them.  Often we find that an action set up earlier in time no longer has meaning or purpose. 
Why do I write a blog?  Does it have any value?  Is it what I want to be doing? 
This year two of my siblings’ spouses have passed on, and a third sister is standing strong by her husband as he battles for his life.   It’s been so hard to watch these people I love suffer.  In some ways, seeing this suffering makes me value life even more.  Time is precious.  I want to treasure each moment, to spend time in worthy and meaningful ways.  It feels like so many of us are focused on money when time is the only true currency of our lives. 

All those minutes and hours and days—it is our wealth. 

One of the areas I was exploring with my coach friend, Gary, was the way that I tie a link between time and money.  If what I am doing is not making money, it must not have value.  This translates into if I am not making money, I must not have value.  One of my teachers, Robert Fritz talked about how some of us have a deeply ingrained sense of not deserving even the air we breathe.  We feel we must earn our right to be here and to belong.  We don’t know how or why this got installed into our programming—it is just a program running in the background like whatever malicious malware snuck into my blog and destroyed it temporarily. 

I don’t want to live that way anymore.  I don’t want to be a slave to some old outdated software that exists in my brain.  While my blog was down, I got on this odd kick of drawing snowmen and putting captions on them.  A totally “moneyless” activity.  Some of them would make me laugh outright as I was drawing them.  Some of them are making others laugh as I drop them on Facebook in an endless stream.  And last month I was totally taken with drilling small stones and twisting small bead people out of 20 gauge wire to fit onto the stone.

Do tiny acts of creation have value and beauty?  I don’t know.  They won’t solve global warming.  They won’t bring world peace.  They don’t pay the bills.
 
Do I love engaging in micro acts of creation that make me laugh or cry or smile or that touch my heart? To me that has true value, especially as I become keenly aware of how fragile these sacks of skin and bones that house our spirits really are. 

I don’t know if I blog for myself or for you.  I know that when I sit down with sincere intention and just share my thoughts it seems to reach you and maybe help you face what you must face today.  And it does exactly the same for me.  Just for today.  Again, it doesn’t make money—I just can’t think of it as a “marketing tool” to send your racing off to my website to buy my books.

Alas.  It is a good thing my needs are simple and getting simpler, since I just can’t seem to muster a bunch of energy just to “make money.” 
 
On the other hand, my life is filled with wealth.  I have crafted a life that is exactly and precisely what I want and where I want it. 

A few questions for you as we roll into the new year.  Are you spending your time as a precious commodity?  Are you doing what makes you even more you?  Are you dropping or cutting away things that take your spirit because they no longer hold meaning for you?  Are you?
 
Am I?

Milt and I were talking this morning over coffee.  I wrote the earlier part of this post yesterday, but we were talking over some of the same ideas.  We decided that we would “resolve” in 2016 to be just as selfish as we could be, spending more time in creative pursuit, spending more time with art and music and micro acts of creation, spending more time with really cool people.  Even just writing this down awakens all the negative triggers around “mustn’t be selfish.”  I guess just for once I’d like to know where all that selfishness would lead.  I don’t think that it will mean taking more than we have a right to.  We just aren’t built that way.  It might mean that we just quit feeling guilty when we are engaged in inner delight.

Enough for now.  I’d like to hear your reaction to some of this.  I value each and every comment that comes from this blogging thing.  And naturally, I can’t resist sharing some of my snowmen with you.  You can see them all on my Facebook page.