Random on Purpose

The Present

Okay, let's start with true confessions:  I have a short attention span.  I mean, REALLY short!  They say that the sign of a creative mind is several unfinished projects lying around, and I'm going to go with that thought.  I'd hate to think that it's just because I'm...hmm, what's the word...can't come up with a term, but it relates to failure-to-follow through.  Nah - I'll go with creative.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Having said that, I'll also say this:  Maybe it's not so much a creative thing as it is a level of interest thing.  There are so many things out there that interest me, and I feel like I have to at least TRY them all (or as many as possible)!  Then, sometimes I lose interest along the way and move on to the next thing.  We can't love everything all the time, can we?

Ultimately my point is this:  Life is way too short to waste my time with things that don't interest me, even if once upon a time they did.  If I lose interest, rather than flog a dead horse, I merely move on to the next point of interest.  Hey - a weird analogy just popped into my head!  Let's say that you're on a sightseeing trip across America (you can see where this is going, can't you?)  You wouldn't just stand and stare at Old Faithful for the whole trip - you'd get back in your car and head out to the Grand Canyon and over to Venice Beach to see the freaks and up to San Francisco to Fisherman's Wharf and all the rest of it!  Similarly, I'm a firm believer in pursuing your interests, but when interest wanes, move on...  There's a BILLION things out there (and no, I don't think I'm exaggerating) to see and do and try!

So, that's the rest of my little introduction.  Not that you cared so much, but introductions are a good thing, I think - makes it friendlier.  What I'll post on here is whatever enters my head and/or whatever I create with my hands or whatever wonderful things that I come across to share.  As with other areas of my life, it could be a daily thing, or a weekly thing, or some of each.  Depends on what life presents me with that particular day.  Speaking of presents, this is one of my favorite quotes:

    "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery.  Today is a gift - that's why we call it the present."  ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

That is my gift today - a nudge to you to go and do something with your ever-new, ever-PRESENT!  I'm off to do the same!

Introduction

I was originally going to title this blog "Random Girl", because that's how I feel a good deal of the time, but then I began reevaluating.  One of my deeply held beliefs is that there are no accidents, and that the reason things happen, or get said, or whatever, serves a purpose. If I truly believe that (which I do), then how could my thoughts and writings and such be truly random?

It's been my experience to this point in my life that even the weirdest, worst things that happen take a logical place in the big picture, but generally not until some time (sometimes a LOT of time) has gone by.

Most often something that happened to me, or that I heard or read somewhere, comes in handy when one of my children is faced with an issue of some sort.   Sometimes it's a friend who's having a trouble.  Sometimes it's an idea that turns into a business or that gets expanded into a bigger, better idea.

Following that train of thought, I mulled over some of the things brewing in my brain to write about here, and realized that IT WAS MAKING ME MORE AWARE, more fully present in my daily life.  It was also crystalizing thoughts and beliefs and information that I've been incubating for quite some time now.  That, I decided, was a VERY worthwhile thing (for me, at least), and obviously served a purpose.

The question then becomes:  If I realize, as I now do, that "random" isn't really a concept I believe, why would I include it at all?  The answer to this is that, at the moment that things are happening, or being said, or thought, or whatever, they may seem completely random.  It takes the context of time and further experience to see how it all holds together.

Hence, the title of this little blog:  I'm being Random on Purpose.  Some of my best insights and actions have followed stream-of-consciousness thought flow.  My train of thought derails frequently, and takes me where I wasn't planning to go, but the destination is usually better than the one I'd planned on...