After 13 years of maintaining a professional blog that tracked with the latter third of a 35+ year corporate learning and development career, I struggled with walking away. How do you abandon thousands of hours of training content, articles, and knowledge-sharing posts on a blog that define a documented trail of who you were, what you did, and who gave a rip…or not?
It was a wild ride for sure, but I survived…and wrote my first…and only non-fiction book, “Confessions of a Performance Consultant,” warts and all and possibly where some of the bodies are buried in my past.
I initially struggled with the angst that dogged me, fueled by rude, self-inflicted accusations that I did not possess the stones to press the Delete Entire Site button and cut the cord. So, I pressed it.
When the idiot prevention window popped up and asked, “Are you Sure?” I punched “Yes” and walked away from 13 years of owning the original blog, Living in Learning. However, I was able to archive posts all the way back to 2009, when I became a blogger author inside a corporate hostage consultant role. I learned by living the role. When I think about it, hasn’t that been a truth always? Learning by Living?
I think I suffered postpartum symptoms until I felt the presense of something I’d been suppressing; rather, someone who is a relentless Wench Muse, who manages to remain just out of reach. She has a way of reminding me with a whisper into my mind, “You can get in your own way, mate, so hear me when I say…You should sit the fuck down and be a writer of things from this day forward and just let…it…go. It’s done, mate. Stick a fork in it, baby; it’s done.”
So I did. I punched the “Yes” button hard enough to cut the cord and was jettisoned into the free fall of redeployment as a Writer of Things in a new world that still straddles the former in ways. I had to straddle, there were and still are too many friends to abandon while I plunged into this new adventure in faith.
A new blog rose out of the ashes, “Learning by Living,” with a name that references an absolute truth…we Learn by Living. The name embodies the chaos of today with access to a lot of posts that were used in the Performance Ninja book. The new blog is – https://www.learningbyliving.blog Give it a like!
Today is April 6, 2024, and I remain corporate blog-free for over a year. No, I am not an AI bot. I am a 100% pure organic human, which will be good to remember as I write this next book with the relentless Wench Muse, who manages to remain just out of reach…is never to be named, and …is 100% Australian female. Don’t even ask why I went down that path, mate, but I did go down that path with intentions that shall remain proprietary.
She leaves a fetching image in my mind, even when She shows up without warning out of thin air. That’s abrupt. I’m not sure I like that spooky appear-in-my-mind-at-will shit, so maybe I will have to write in an off switch. No, I didn’t just say that…because when She whispers, “Hey, Mate!” I must confess I’m done, just stick-a-fork-in-me-done…and I listen.
By the way, “She” is the relentless Wench Muse who manages to remain just out of reach, but to Her credit, She repeatedly guides me with the need to focus and pursue the next chapters that haven’t been written. I’d prefer not to be ordered to do things I’d rather not do, but it’s that damn Australian accent of Hers that whispers in my mind.
I’m just glad She’s not a real girl. I might be stretching boundaries here, but weird things like that might appear in the next book, so there are no more spoilers here.
I welcome you to witness the chaos in my waking hours, what She instigates with Her guidance, and how skillful She is in being relentless while managing to remain just out of reach as this next book percolates.
It’s nuts…a moving shitshow quite often, as are some of my own thoughts that bubble up as brain farts, and damn if the relentless Wench Muse, who manages to remain just out of reach, is on the scent of a new story or an uncharted twist, soooo…I’m on for the ride.
Here we go because some brain collisions and other nonsense will be journaled here when it breaks the surface.
Follow Learning by Living to be so very informed – https://www.learningbyliving.blog.
Here’s the link to my Amazon Author page with five of the mystery suspense thrillers with a dusting of sci-fi.
Peace! G.