New Year, New Beginning, New Day

A fresh new day. A New Year, full of possibilities. A chance to begin anew.

It isn't so much that I'm looking to start over again, as that I want to remove the obstacles that have hindered me in the past. I'm tired of stumbling my way around and around the mountains of "Can't" in my life. I'm ready to begin the journey fresh. With this step. From this moment. NOW.

Writing is what I love. I go into a zone and come out on the other side of it happy and fulfilled and peaceful. I love words. I love their rhthym, their power, their beauty and grace, their own special music. I love the way words fall onto paper and align themselves into sentences and become real.

I've been aware of the magic of words for as long as I can remember. I've been talking my heart out since I came into this world, just to hear words fall from lips. From the beginning I was fascinated by anything in print on paper. "Read it to me," I'd demand. "Tell me what it says." Or "How do I spell that word? What does it mean?"

The gladdest day of my life, the most exciting thing to ever happen in my world, was the day I went to school for the first time. They were going to teach me to read. But there was more. A wonderful surprise. I learned how to write, how to form words myself. And from there I quickly learned to put the words together and write them down, turning them into my own stories to read, and then into poetry and journals.

For the past eight years I've been writing and publishing my work online in various forums and newsletters, in newsletters of my own, and in a blog. I've been published in print form in obscure magazines and a Chicken Soup book. And every day I sit down and write more. Because words are the fire shut up in my bones. Words pour through me. I read. I write. I read more. I write more. It goes on and on.

So why a new blog at this time? Because I'm tired of being trapped by own creation. Six years ago, I began a little newsletter called Penny Ann Poundwise. It was based on my knowledge of living a frugal but fulfilling life. I've loved Penny Ann from the beginning. A God given inspiration in the middle of the night, I started out with ten readers, most of them close friends. Today my reader base hovers around 1100 for the newsletter, and about 1500 readers per week on my blog of the same name. I've learned a great deal while writing Penny Ann. I've learned how to write clearly and concisely. I've learned to edit and edit and edit and edit. I've learned the necessity of proofing four times and then going over it once more. I've learned to 'hear' the words as I proofread so that I can keep a consistent rhythm throughout a piece.

But I've also been caged. Locked into a persona that isn't entirely fictional but isn't real either. Locked into a subject matter that is confining at times because it's what the readers want from me and what they ask for again and again. I need to break away from that a little. I need to be myself, without cramping my personality into a one-dimensional creation. I need to be who I am in real life. Rough and embarrassingly naked in spots. Competent and strong and able. Faulty and anxious and fearful. A romantic. Ugly and beautiful. A poet still. A woman. A mother. A daughter. A wife. REAL. Extraordinary in the ordinary.

So here I am. Me.