Why I Write

My goal with this blog is to write a little something every day. From my earliest days of awareness (okay, yes, some will claim that was last week – it really was around 5 years old), I wanted to write. It was going to be a great American novel. Maybe that dream is still alive in me, for now I am happy to write a daily post.

I love reading. I love writing. While writing, I lose track of time and body awareness. The term for this is ‘flow state’.  That’s on the good days.

My biggest obstacle is when I get in my head and have this conversation, “You need to write for an audience. That’s a boring topic. You have nothing to share or write about that is of interest to anyone else.”  The result is I end up trying to write for everyone else’s entertainment which is exhausting so I stop writing. I tell myself, “ A ‘good’ writer is most likely not exhausted trying to write for others. So, I must not be a good writer.”

I am done with that ‘stinkin thinkin.’ I am done making excuses.

This blog is my effort to get away from writing for everyone else’s entertainment. My hope is that it will be a safe place to see what the Coehlo’s are up to if people are so inclined AND that it may bless your life to some extent as we share retirement life, our world view and our adventures once we begin traveling and moving to Minnesota. (Okay, mostly my world view seeing as to how Joe is not writing the blog. Though I’d love to get him to be a guest writer, here. By the way – anyone who reads this who wants to be a guest writer is also welcome! Just email what you’d like to post to my bethcoehlo@aol.com email and I’ll post with your name in my blog), 

I fully anticipate this blog to be about my emotional and physical processing of retirement during the next two months while we are packing up our home in preparation for the big move to Minnesota. Or you might be reading about our travel plans as I sketch them out. I am going to let this blog transform and flow as the days arrive.

As I write today, I think about how people create Tik Tok or Facebook videos and how I really enjoy one person in particular, Ophelia Nichols. Ophelia makes every day ordinary seem extraordinary. What a gift! I also read a daily posting by historian Heather Cox Richardson on the day’s political news (or a day in history). Heather contributes to my sanity.

I know writing daily will also contribute to my sanity and I hope I can find the extraordinary in my daily ordinary.

I have one HUGE Favor. When you post a comment, would it be possible at the end of the comment to put your first name and last initial, so I know who commented? If I turn off the anonymous settings, then people must create an account and I’d rather not make that a condition of being able to comment on the blog.