Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT).
We're known as the MOTley Crew and you can find us here every morning at 6:30 Eastern. Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanently or just once in awhile. With the auto-publish feature you can set it and forget it. Sometime, the diarist du jour shows up much later, that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Just let us know in the comments. You can click on the Morning Open Thread "heart" if you'd like us to show up in your stream every day.
Doing one of these diaries is a good way to get your feet wet if you have been hesitant about writing a diary. You can write as much or as little as you want. The audience here is always supportive.
Today's diary is a very different and personal one for me. Please bear with me while I share some introspection I have been doing lately.
I have been writing one diary per week here at Morning Open Thread for exactly eight months now. When I was first approached about contributing a weekly diary, I consented to do so only on a trial basis. Writing diaries has never come easy for me and often I was scrambling to find a subject that would be interesting and appealing to a broad audience. Lately, that has become increasingly more difficult.
Since the first of the year, I have become more introspective of my place in the world. I am of the age when the future before me is not that long in time and when I should know how I fit into it. But I don't. Although I am getting a better idea now than I had several years ago, it is still very fuzzy.
Fiddlegirl's diaries about her challenges facing cancer and her own metamorphosis have really struck a chord within me. Thank you so very much, Fiddlegirl for helping to inspire us all. More than once your sharing has motivated me to think more deeply about my own life, particularly recently.
For the several years since I retired, I have been basically floating through life when I should have been more active in the world around me. Sure, I have done some volunteer work in areas of my personal interests and have found it to be rewarding. But I know I can contribute more to my community, and I can definitely do more towards my own personal development.
Reading and posting here at dkos has made me much more politically aware and has expanded my intellectual world. I am very grateful to my dear friend, eeff, bringing me here to dkos and to the role dkos has had in helping me hone my political views. Unknown to me, those views turned out to be much more progressive than I once thought. But the fact is that I have been spending way too much time on line in recent years. Reading, learning and commenting are great, but I also should be doing.
While being on line has helped me educate myself about the issues in the real world, my own real world had become less varied in recent years. Where I had once been very physically active, I was now spending way too much time sitting on my butt staring at my computer screen. With that in mind, beginning in December, I embarked upon a physical self improvement program to regain a measure of fitness while losing a few extra pounds that made me feel sluggish. I started walking 3.1 miles briskly every day. I am now beginning a strength program to help me to try to regain some of the muscle tone and strength I once had. That is not easy when one is over sixty, but it can be done. This is something I am very motivated to do so that I can do some hiking with my husband.
Years ago, I painted pictures. My mother constantly urges me to take it up again. It does not have to be great, just the act of expressing myself in a non verbal form would do wonders for my soul. I believe there is an artist of some sort within each of us. Tapping into it again will take some work, but the process is more important than the product. Forcing oneself to take up a challenge that you never thought you could do is another way to grow. I intend to challenge myself physically, emotionally, and creatively much more this year.
With that in mind, I have notified my fellow Morning Open Thread diarists that I intend to take a break from writing a regular diary each week. Today will be my last Morning Open Thread diary for a while. I cannot thank everyone enough for the support each of you have given me in my diaries with your comments and recommendations. Writing on a regular basis is challenging and has been a rewarding learning experience. I am not leaving permanently. I will still come here and post, but my main focus will be elsewhere for a while.