A Road Well Worn

Today I’m celebrating my 200th blog entry! It’s an amazing milestone to me, why? Because it began with such a small step. What I’ve learned along the way is that this journey that people speak of does not, had not, begun when I thought I’d begun it. No, it began with all those unnoticed steps I’d taken beforehand as opposed to the more noticeable ones that get all the attention.

Journeys are strange creatures, like us. They are strange and interesting and different all at once and while we might consider them similar on occasions to another’s, not one of us, can say that ours is really and truly like anyone else’s. I love it that this thought is so wildly independent of anything vaguely resembling conformity. How delicious!

It surprises me still, of how unaware I feel I was, of the distances I’d travelled or the sheer numbers and kinds of people I’d met along the way. I suppose it wasn’t even a case of being ‘unaware’ so much as being blind to the details. It can get like that. Instead of looking forward and along we end up looking at our feet because after a long time it can feel like a major triumph just to simply get one foot in front of the other!

Celebrating this milestone is a lovely feeling, there’s a sense of real achievement and hard won yards. From time to time I go back into the archives just to relive a moment or several in fact that I never really allowed myself to roll around in the memory of like a pig in mud. It’s a hugely satisfying feeling of mud-between-the-toes detail.

Sometimes I feel like we’re stingy in giving ourselves the permission we deserve to whoop it up over the smaller things that ought to be enjoyed with as much gusto as the ‘bigger’ ones. Such a shame really! Nevertheless, I’d like you to raise a glass and toast with me this big celebration that had such small beginnings. Cheers everyone!