Inspiration

I have been perusing my favorite sites, reading some of my old poetry and typing line after line then throwing them away. I was diligently looking for the muse that used to electrify my psyche. Where is that commodity that lit the fire within my superego. It seemed that this inspiration was just beyond my grasp and no matter what I tried I could not get close enough for it to touch my soul one more time.

As I was looking at some of my old thoughts, I ran across one that seemed to bring it all into perspective for me. Once; some years ago, I wrote “If you can’t find yourself, you’re not looking deep enough within, or reaching high enough toward the stars.” Hmmmm…maybe I found my muse after all.

Could it have been that easy? Should I have been reaching deeper inside to find that inspiration? Has it been there all of this time, laying dormant within my subconscious mind? And to think, I have been chasing it around the net all this time.

I have always been a true believer of the saying “Before anyone else can love you, you have to love yourself.” But with all that has been going on lately, I seem to have forgotten that bit of wisdom. I had forgotten that I can create my own destiny and that I only had to look within myself to find that elusive muse that I had “lost” in the recent past. I had been so busy feeling sorry for the sickly “old” woman that I have become that I forgot to love myself for the intelligent, loving, spiritually blooming and yes, beautiful woman that I have become.

All of my pain, medical problems and procedures, the weight gain only making my arthritis worse, and worry over my upcoming disability hearing. I had forgotten that I am still the most important person in my life. That my own thoughts and feelings should always weigh the most in any decision that I make. But most importantly that as long as I am true to myself, even my bad decisions have helped me to grow by learning from those mistakes.

I had been feeling homesick for the last few weeks since rediscovering Sheila as the true being that I am. I decided that I needed to reconnect to “Me” as I had been in the past since that was part of my life that helped to shape me as I am now. To do this, I needed to locate some of my school friends once again.

I sat down at my computer and began typing in names from school to Facebook, also I typed in Shelby High School and class of ’80. I had tried these searches before and didn’t think I would have much luck, but suddenly I found a group from Shelby Sr High in the 80′s with only a few names that I recognized. (It was a start anyway.) That led to adding one, then two, then four more, etc friends requests that I sent out to people I knew.

I accumulated friends on my list quite fast actually. So many friends that I knew from “home” in Shelby. Many of them no longer living there either but are just as hungry to find out what is happening in Shelby as I am. Others still live in Shelby and are eager to tell us what has been going on around our old hang-outs. All of us eager to let the others know how we have shaped each others accomplishments in this existence.

It has been fun seeing where they all are in their lives. Their families, children and grandchildren, their jobs and homes. Finding out about the causes that they champion and the entertainment that interests them. Then thinking back to my childhood and comparing what we all dreamed for our lives at this time. Some of us have achieved our dreams and some are doing things that I never expected to find them doing.

Hundreds of people have shaped each of our lives throughout our growth. From our birth through adolescence and into adulthood; (and even beyond into old age), we are changing. Everyday our lives are touched by others, many of whom we call an inspiration to us. We say that we have tried to fashion our lives after them and we may well have let some of them shape our morality to a small extent. However, the truth of the matter is, we are first our own inspiration and must let the love we have for ourselves shape us into the human being we need to be.

Always be true to yourself and then others will be true to you as well.

Until next time…Sheila

Neturbian Reality

What is “reality” in this technotropolis we live in? We get up each day (or night). Go to work/school when our schedule dictates us to do so; return home at the end of our day. Then we plop down in front of the computer (sometimes TV or both) and work on losing ourselves in someone else’s reality we find there.

First thing we want to do is look at our emails then straight to the news feed that is of interest to us. Have to keep up with what may be going on in the world. This way we have something to complain about when we chat on the IM.

We check what’s going on with Twitter, maybe our favorite “star” was arrested last night or delivered that baby we pretend we were waiting to find out about. Nothing going on there; then we can check Facebook. Now we are reading (or not) all the little status notes our “friends” have listed there. Of course, those closest to us will have to be answered for what they said on our own wall, but we can ignore those people we don’t want to talk to.

Lets not forget about You tube and My Space. There may be some links that we just have to post to our walls. This because we are hoping that everyone will look at them. And in doing so, we are certain everyone on our friends list will want to see them and love them as much as we do.

Now we are going to move on to the blog sites, WordPress is my drug of choice. Some may prefer Blogger or Opera or even the status blog of our favorite game. First we have to read all our subscription so we know what is on everyone’s mind today. Then we begin composing a witty comment or two to post on the threads we are reading.

Then, after we have exhausted all avenues, some of us will begin to write our own blog post. It isn’t right if we haven’t checked on everyone that we are “virtually” connected to. How could it be right if we haven’t looked at what others are most interested in? Would they read our blog if it was not of the theme and quality that they could get elsewhere in the cyber-world?

As I cleaned my kitchen today with Phil, I began to realize how connected to the net I am. I haven’t been able to do much housework in the previous years so it is difficult for me to get it done. I have to stop frequently to rest and the first thing I did when I sat down was check what was new on the net.

Continually, I had to see those real-time updates like a junkie getting a fix. Who is online? What do they have to say? Did they make a comment or respond to that one I left earlier? Oh and how did I just get that update but it says it was added 27 minutes ago?

Now, I have been working on this post for the last two hours. I will check my syntax then paste it to my blog site. Making certain it is perfect in every way I can, I will post it to Sheila’s Space keeping in mind that it is also showing on my all powerful wall on Facebook (and Yahoo updates).

One “reality” here is that I have done all of this filling my precious free time. Another “reality” is that I (like everyone else) have very little of this free time to fill. And the most important “reality” is that no one is going to care that I posted this so they won’t take up any of their free time to read what I have written. They are too busy spending all of their free time, lost in the “reality” that everyone they “know” in their neturbia thinks they are the most important person posting today.

So now that I have gotten all of this off my chest I will post it to my blog site. I have come to terms with the “reality” and know that it will not be perused by anyone. But that’s okay, because I already grasp the “reality” that I am the most important person in my life and my “reality” is right here in my hands to be molded into whatever I want it to be.

Until the next time…Sheila