Life.Simple.Perspective

Soon I will be celebrating another anniversary of my Life Simple with The People Whisperer/Life.Simple.Perspective blog.  It seems like just yesterday that I stepped outside of my comfort zone and pressed “publish” after writing my very first post. That moment was both scary and exhilarating for me.  Scary because by pushing that button it meant that my writing could now be read by people all over the world.  Naturally thoughts ran through my mind like what if nobody reads my stuff?  What if no one cares about or likes what I have to say?  Well 143 posts later (not nearly enough), I’m proud to say that I’m still writing (after a brief sabbatical) and hopefully folks are still reading.  In fact when I don’t write, they don’t read and that motivates me to keep going.  But doing something like this takes a village.  I couldn’t do it without the help of other people and that has been good for my independent spirit.  In the beginning I built a website but it didn’t do anything until I reached out and God sent me a caring person to help me.  I wasn’t active on social media but thanks to friends who guided and directed me, I now manage two Facebook pages.  You can build it but they won’t come unless they know about you and that’s where my followers and friends come in.  Your continuous love and support have gotten me this far.  I am so grateful to all of you for taking the time to read my blogs and to write comments; for sharing your stories, photos and inspirational sayings with me.  I am grateful to my sponsor 47SeaGlass who trusts me enough to go along for the ride.

When I embarked on this journey four years ago (it was actually longer than that but I let fear hold me back) my primary goal was to inspire people by writing honest and sincere material that others could relate to.  In my very first blog post, I said that sometimes my blogs would be simple, silly and uplifting while at other times you would read the “not so simple” posts of the people whisperer. I still believe that caring is sharing and that by sharing my own personal life experiences and how I’ve overcome some of the obstacles that I’ve faced can help others who are in similar situations.  My desire has never been to “air my dirty laundry”, to embarrass anyone or to entertain, although I can be pretty entertaining at times.

My goal continues to be to inspire people and to hopefully give others takeaways that they can apply to their own lives.  After all we are in this crazy mixed up world together!  I feel like I have an advantage with many of you in my personal Facebook group because I know you.  I grew up with you.  I played with you.  I’ve attended church and school with you.  I’ve partied with you.  I’ve worked with you.  I’m related to you.  I’ve had a crush on you.  I know what you’ve been through and some of what you are going through at the present time and that continues to endear me to you.  Engaging with you on Facebook inspires some of the topics that I write about.  You’ve probably noticed (or not) that I don’t post selfies.  This is mainly because I’m not that confident in myself but mostly because I would rather focus outward and not inward.  I would prefer to celebrate you and the beauty of God all around us instead of me. 

I’ve learned a lot this past year.  I’m not the most disciplined person in the world but in order to write, I’ve had to learn how to manage my time more wisely, to set priorities and to just say no.  A typical blog post takes me 6-8 hours to write with all of the research and edits that are involved.  I’m constantly trying to find the balance between working my full time job, spending time with family and friends and “me” time.  My heart’s desire is to become a full time writer.  I would love to be a traveling blogger and write about all of the wonderful people, places and things that I experience along the way but I need an income therefore I must work.  When you are doing something that you love and are passionate about, it is no longer “work”.  When you are operating in your gift, it is effortless.  You wake up one day and realize that you have been doing something for a long time and it still seems like just yesterday.  To me it resembles the feeling of being in love.  Yes, I am a writer.