Every now and again I question why I write. Why not just live. And into such a moment, plopped Ruthy -- a friend and occasional reader of Chasing Clean Air.
We met for sushi last night where in-between bites of eel (ew!) she excitedly told me about how she loved ziplining. The rush! The adrenaline! The overcoming fear! Oh! How she trembled with fear before stepping off "good land" as she put and into the unknown. Would she get stuck? Would she fall? Would she go through with it?
She almost turned back before her first zipline. A hundred times in her head. Had she, she would've missed her first encounter of what's becoming my motto: turn fear into exhilaration. So here's my tie-in. My pitch to myself to keep writing. According to Ruthy, she would have never gotten the idea to zipline and the subsequent courage if not for reading my blog, and watching my zipline video. And now she's telling her friends to zipline, and I'm seeing this ripple effect on an unseen group of growing risk-takers. And I wonder. What will I take on next?
When I first started writing as a teenager, it was to have a best-friend in myself, my diary, and then it evolved to venting, and then to being clever with words (especially my first adventure fiction manuscript), and to sharing, and now I'd say writing is increasingly about transforming.
I'm more interested in being more as a person, as opposed to having (and certainly traveling with) more.
If I were to reduce my blog to the most salient one or two words, it may surprise you that it wouldn't be clean air.
It would be...
Transformation
Photo is my first zipline experience in Sooke, British Columbia.
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