Speaking Once More

Well hello again, dear readers. It's been over a year since my latest post. I can't believe how much life has changed in this year. I set aside a lot of creative outlets for myself over this past year. Things have been busy, and in a lot of ways I have been in "grind mode" a good deal of the time. It's been a cyclical pattern. Get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed, sleep, repeat. Over and over and over again. However, as I write this morning I have decided to actively reclaim my creative capacity.

I've been thinking a lot this morning about the name of this blog. "Spoken Silence." This morning as I sit at the kitchen table typing, many would consider this a quiet morning with silence abouding. However, when I tune my ears to the world around me, when I really lean in and listen, there is noise everywhere. Outside there are crickets and frogs greeting the new day with their songs. There are cars filled with passengers making their way into work, or perhaps making their way home after a night shift. Inside the house I hear the clicks and taps from my keyboard. One of the cats is in the next room having his breakfast of crunchy kibble. My chair creaks as I shift to grab my coffee mug, and that clinks as I set it back on the table. Not so silent of a morning after all.

Just as this quiet morning is not so quiet, so too our lives speak volumes if only we would listen.

I started "Spoken Silence" to shed light into dark areas. The goal was to cover topics we often would rather leave quiet. To, quite literally, speak into the most silent parts of our lives. We've covered loss, heartbreak, religious doubt, depression, anxiety... But we've also covered happy moments. Celebrations, moments that proved insightful, high points in history... all of these too are sometimes left to silence. Just as I have been in "grind mode" this past year and a half, so too we all get in these states where we let the lows as well as the highs pass by without speaking them into the universe around us. We merely exist, allowing the next thing to come and go, never taking the time to name it and therefore claim it as a part of us.

I've done this for a year and a half. I have allowed life to merely pass by. No more. I invite you along on this renewed journey dear reader. My goal in restarting with this blog is to reclaim speaking into silent moments. We cannot allow ourselves to be numb to this maddening, messy, marvelous world. And so I write.