It\u2019s pretty brazen to create a website featuring my writing\nwhen I\u2019m scarcely a published author or even a creative writer by trade. It\u2019s a\nbit scary, honestly, to put creative work out there, writing that puts heart before\nmind. But hey, what do I have to lose? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a time in our world when it seems people are drawing into\nthemselves, retreating from the world at large, maybe my words or the stories I\ntell can help draw some of them back out. Stories make people laugh. They make people cry. They create\nconnections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I used to think that some connections were immutable. That\nthey would stand the test of time. Connection to faith. Connection to family.\nConnection to self. Yet at the dawn of this new decade, I find myself detached\nfrom those grounding elements in my life in ways that I\u2019ve never experienced.\nFaith. Family. Identity. Some of these core connections have either eroded gradually\nor been blasted apart in the past few years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not always an easy place to be. In fact, sometimes it\nsucks. Without these connections, I question who I am. I question the world\nI\u2019ve created, the beliefs I\u2019ve held. I question the existence of God. It\u2019s as\nif I\u2019m spinning in circles, twisting around and around so fast that I can\u2019t\nreach out to stop myself or grab hold of anything to slow me down. It\u2019s dizzying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do I do now? I can\u2019t crawl into a hole and wait for\nthe questions to stop. They won\u2019t go away, and my beliefs certainly won\u2019t suddenly\nrevert back to what they were. Some have irrevocably changed. Others are\nstretched thin, and only time will tell if they strengthen and rebound or\nsimply snap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having the ground shift out from under me gives me the\nchance to repair or replace those connections that have broken. I\u2019ve got an\nopening to change what isn\u2019t serving me. The definition of an existential\ncrisis, it is also an existential opportunity. An opportunity to look at the\nworld differently. To live without certainty. To explore new futures. And to\nconnect to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s where the website comes in. I want to connect. I\nwant to create a new future. I want to reach people and get my voice out there,\nmy stories and the ideas that make me laugh or cry. My life has been amazingly\nfull and incredibly packed with people and places and crazy-assed adventures. And\nthe narratives of these experiences I\u2019ve lived are inside me, waiting to be\ntold, waiting for me to lend them my voice. \n\nI don\u2019t expect that my site itself will be groundbreaking.\nIt may be full of errors. It may be juvenile. I\u2019ll be putting myself out there\npublicly — for fun, for ridicule, for inspection or speculation \u2013 and maybe I\u2019ll\nbe the only one reading it. But it will\ngive me satisfaction, knowing that I\u2019ve finally put my heart out there and am\ntaking the risk to make new connections. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s pretty brazen to create a website featuring my writing when I\u2019m scarcely a published author or even a creative writer by trade. It\u2019s a bit scary, honestly, to put creative work out there, writing that puts heart before mind. But hey, what do I have to lose? At a time in our world when it seems people are … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[41,42,43,45,44],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-connections","tag-faith","tag-family","tag-self","tag-stories","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabetholdham.com\/wpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}