A series of essays….
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
ARE YOU READY FOR CHANGE?
….as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E Hughes
With the beginning of a brand new year, a certain amount of change is inevitable. Resolutions are firm decisions to do or not to do something. And, sure enough, most of us resolve to make changes, hopefully for the betterment of our lives: lose weight, read more books, advance our career with a better job that pays more money, quit smoking, eat more healthily, share our love for others more openly, and improve our lives in general.
Often, our resolutions prove to be difficult to keep as the days and weeks of the new year roll out before us. Our intentions are good but the hard work required to see the changes take place can prove long and tedious and life itself often gets in our way.
Yes, some might choose to call this added pressure that we place on ourselves. After all, we were born to be real and not to be perfect. It’s always nice to know that we tried even though we may not always succeed.
This past September marked my ninth year of diligently placing my weekly stories out into the ethos with my individual thought processes, mindset, floating along the waves of social media and direct to you. I believed that if I understood what made me tick (travel, people of other cultures, new landscapes discovered), I could better understand what makes others tick and share ideas and experiences with them.
My ideas evolved into so much more as time passed. Life rubbed off on me—in a good way. My travel recollections progressed into childhood memories, to fictional characters sipping coffee and tea in their neighborhood coffeehouse while exchanging ideas about life, to the positive side of politics that, suddenly, became the negative side of life in general on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Yes, politics engulfed me and I felt it my duty to express truth over all of the evil that surrounded us during his four years in office and beyond!
My innocence back in September of 2013, right after my return from the Wild Atlantic Way of coastal Ireland, was coupled with passion for the two things that pulled at my heart and soul—writing and travel. My Blog post was entitled Moving On…2013 and was born out of guts and determination. It reflected my love for travel, but it proved to be laying the groundwork for something much bigger and stronger: my imagination.
I was building a forum for my thoughts and expressions that knew no boundaries; was open to my own interpretations and could float me along an uncharted space by just closing my eyes while choosing which direction to travel inside my mind that particular week. It was a very heady scenario for me as a writer which, eventually, proved delightful and often quite therapeutic. The research alone behind most of my stories was a form of knowledge and enlightenment that opened up my mind to even bigger and better things. And then, I got to write about it and share it all with you.
You may or may not have noticed the mini-vacation from my Blog post these past few weeks. I’ve taken this time to try and work out several aspects that have relentlessly nagged at me after nine years of blogging. I asked myself if blogging was the best way to communicate with my readers and was I able, via my Blog, to reach out to more readers each week? Given the algorithm employed by Facebook, readership was not growing.
I discovered that more hard work was needed and that submitting to various writing journals for publication would be a favorable addition to weekly posts. I understood the importance of making time to publish my manuscript that began long ago but continues to pull me in multiple directions like a small child freed from parental restraints. This work has taken me back to the reason I fell in love with writing in the first place, as a young elementary student reading Nancy Drew mysteries I’d checked out from the school library.
So—I believed that my attempt at working out what is right for me was better accomplished during the busy holiday weeks when time can be filled with organic detritus and white noise anyway. I could afford to take a mini-break. Being with family and friends helped me think about what my future plans might be; place what is most important into proper perspective.
Some of you missed my weekly frolic into the unknown, simplified, and unsupervised world of my imagination. Thank you for noticing and expressing your thoughts. I’ve written about this, before: the ego of most writers (artists in general) is happiest when it is stroked by those who appreciate all of their hard work and effort. I, unabashedly, fit into this portrait and attribute some of my best work with this thought in mind. After all, you, my readers, are who I aim to please and, for this reason, I take my work, seriously!
So, with the New Year, 2023, right around the corner, I resolve to make various changes in my work, hopefully, for the better. If you, as a reader, decide to leave my story hanging like a piece of fruit on a tree—I must either accept this or work even harder for your comments and reactions to my posts. Also, with you sharing my work on social media it would help to play it forward for more people to see, read, glean and harvest the messages my stories are sending out.
I thank you for your kind patience. Soon, I will be changing the look of my site with regards to freshness and being a bit brighter, softer. Sometimes change comes easily and sometimes it takes a village to make things happen. Surprisingly, I’m all for change if it is a means for making things better and clearer for others to understand and accept.
Here’s wishing all of you one of the Happiest New Years you could possibly imagine. After all we’ve been through in the past several years, I think each and every one of us deserves it! Let’s embrace the changes being made in order to accept all of the wonders this coming year has to offer. And, let’s make ‘Love’ shine through in every way possible…!
Live Kindly
Laugh Wholeheartedly
Love Deeply
Copyright © 2022 by Jacqueline E Hughes
All rights reserved
