We Heart It
The other day I was sitting at work reveling in the feeling of having changed my blog back to Her Silent Musings after, more or less, having an identity crisis of sorts the last year and a half. A year and a half. And I’ve already gone through three different blog titles and two different blog hosts. But, instead of feeling discomfited and worried about my lack of decisiveness, I felt more at home with myself, even in the physical realm of the world. I’m a silent muser. Or, I used to be. I’m not as quiet as I once was, but I still keep a lot of thoughts to myself. I think I’ll always be more of an introvert, more reserved. Yes, I like going out and being around people, but I’m impartial to attention. I’m more of the quiet observer, unless I’ve had a few drinks, in which case I start talking in a British accent, and giggle and snort at everything.
Being the muser that I am, however, I was doing some thinking on my tagline the other day at work. If you’ve noticed, it’s a little different. But only a little. I added two small, seemingly insignificant words, but two words which add on to the meaning of this blog – take it a step farther than it once went.
…to discovery.
Like I said in an earlier post, I think we are all vulnerable to misguidance. It’s around us everyday, everywhere. It is our job to notice it, whether that’s before or after taking part in it. And even if we do take part in it, we can move on from it. We can learn from it, remember it, and assess it better the next time it comes along. Then we can steer clear of it, forge our own paths, pave our own ways to discovering the cosmic things we were meant to discover. I know, I’m starting to go Ethereal Madeleine L’Engle on you. But I believe in that. I believe that we have to greet Misguidance in order to know which direction to take next. Simply put, it’s just sin, sin that we, by merely existing, must encounter everyday as a part of navigating life. There is no way around it except through it. Some of us are vulnerable to it; some of us are better at picking up on its cues and avoiding it. But that is what life is about; that is what I want this blog to be about.
I decided to add onto my tagline after rereading the opening sentence to the first chapter of Susan M. Tiberghien’s book One Year to a Writing Life on Journal Writing. “Quote.” The idea of a day’s journey and traveling and discovering new things every day, writing them down, meditating on them, and figuring out what they’re all about made me feel a bit of a voyager. I have lately, I’ve noticed, become very friendly with words that appeal to traveling, such as the word traveling itself, and navigate. I love the idea of navigation. And maps. I was watching Gilmore Girls the other day, and noticed in one scene that Rory had a map pasted on a wall in her room, and I thought, “I love maps. I want a map in my new room.” I kept a map from my trip to New York. The one we used meandering through the likes of Times Square and Broadway had white trails creased in varying directions from the various ways it had been folded and refolded. I loved that map. I loved how, after a while, it had become soft and pliable.
Another quote from her book I’d read in the chapter on Travel Writing also inspired me. “Quote.” I was relieved that travel writing could be the smallest, most seemingly insignificant steps taken, even in the most familiar of places, and that someone had actually won a prestigious award for a travel writing article about the smallest of travels. It made me want to hone my discovering tools. It made me want to find epiphany in everything I came across throughout my day. In Peter Cameron’s The Weekend, the character Robert says, “Quote.” And unlike most of the theories and beliefs stated from most of the other characters in the book, I felt that Robert had a more sound thought process and belief system than the others, and I agreed with his statement. He may have meant traveling in a larger scope, but I think traveling can simply be just deciding to go somewhere new or familiar in search of discovery. Search – that is also a word I’m loving right now. That’s what traveling is, isn’t it? Searching? When we go on vacation we’re searching for relaxation and peace and familiarity or unfamiliarity. We may not always find it; we may not always realize we’re actively seeking it, but the search is there. We expect to find something during our time away.
So, that is what has brought me here to this decision, to this addition to my tagline. I want to be a seeker, a discoverer, an adventurer, a finder, a navigator, a traveler, a searcher. I want to foster and hone and write and learn. For me, that has to do with musing and recording and meditating. Even if it’s just traveling down the road to a bookstore or cafe or, more ambitiously, voyaging to Fez.