unCommonplace Thoughts

Well, and now I suppose I am blogging.

Which is to say, I am doing something that I never thought I would do of my own freewill. But lo and behold, here I am, on this random Friday in December, facing a blank page and getting out my crayon box of words for a Blogging101 class. (It’s actually helpful, by the way, to picture the things I loved about Kindergarten: lined paper — blue lines on un-white, softly thick newsprint sheets, and the dotted red lines betwixt the blue, places for my curves to bounce and turn or cross as if in defiance — and number two pencils, well-sharpened and pink-tipped for all of my newbie mistakes.)

And just like then, I feel insecure amidst my peers (girls whose hair is perfectly in place and boys with glares I don’t understand, sniggering to each other knowingly) but hopeful of learning new and exciting things about the world. The teacher’s maps and alphabet cut-outs are now replaced by a home full of teenagers and the cold winter world outside our sprinkler-stained windows. (Yep, we never quite got around to cleaning the hard water deposits left there this summer by our unruly system.) Which gets at why I’m here in WordPress taking a class and doing the work: I’m here to learn.

Learning is no small thing, and it’s not an individual matter either. We learn best as we open ourselves and our thoughts to a world that wants to open to us as well, as we offer to the world the ripe apple of our inner self and let that Teacher speak. We are communal, we humans of the earth. And so I no longer write in the privacy of my own world with the few trusted readers I select. Public school, I suppose, is for me at this time the blogging community. I attend with fear and trepidation.

But that’s the deal. I’m a writer. And so I must write. And this little space of thought, like the desk with gum stuck to the bottom and “hello” carved into the smooth wood, is just a surface on which to prop up my book, get out my pencil, and shape some letters. Here’s to practicing my craft in the midst of others and turning it in with the hope of a nice red “S” at the end of the day.

I’m actually excited about this.

Who knew? But I guess this whole thing is one big surprise. Let it be known that I am the last person on earth whom I would have expected to start her own business in floral design. And those of you who found my blog through my business website might be a bit surprised that this first entry is not, in fact, about flowers or design at all. So I’ll let you in on something: I’m not just a florist.

(Gasps and shock, I know.)

We are all so much more than what we do.

But that, I suppose, is a topic for another day. Time to put down the pencil and head outside for some fresh air and maybe the swings.

See you tomorrow. 😉