A Final Farewell

The year 2012 will be remembered for a lot of fond farewells.  We said goodbye to many who defined my generation, from astronaut Neil Armstrong to actor Larry Hagman to singer Whitney Houston to ground-breaker Sherman Helmsley to comedienne Phyllis Diller to author Gore Vidal.  It is also time for me to say goodbye.  I have no plans to leave this world, but I do plan to sign off this space, suspending Mommadods’ Blogarhythmz on this, the 366^th blog in 366 days. 

This has been a journey I have enjoyed immensely.  I consider it a personal accomplishment that I set out to attain a goal and here it is, all tied up in a bow.  If I sound like I am patting myself on the back, I suppose I am.  There were days when I questioned my resolve and others when I questioned my sanity.  For those out there that think blogging is easy, it is.  There are tools and templates that can set you up in the blogging business in a matter of minutes.  Anyone can be a blogger. 

The hard part is being a writer.  As a writer, I confront myself and my demons on a daily basis.  There are visions and snipets and emotions all tied up inside me, and it is a harsh task to bring them out in coherent thoughts.  Blogging is a parity of writing.  With  my entries, I was looking to explore myself and my voice more deeply, choosing substance over cyberspeak.  I wanted to create something lasting for my children, and something revealing for myself.  I also wanted to write in complete sentences.  That so many of you participated in my quest is unexpected and humbling.

One of my close friends asked me at the beginning of the year why I was doing this.  Was it therapeutic? A challenge?  A means of self-expression?  Or all of the above?  I really cannot point to a single motivating factor.  I like projects and challenges; there was something neat about having a finite amount of time to write about an infinite number of things.  But there is clearly more.  I have always been defined to the point of being typecast:  pianist, cook, speaker, Hahvahd grad.  I enjoyed undertaking something that was completely unexpected.  We get so few opportunities in life to reinvent ourselves.  Who is to say that even at this advanced age I cannot become a writer?  Or an artist?  Or an activist?  I want to prove that life still offers all the opportunities it did when I was making critical choices back in college.  Just because I took one road in my twenties does not mean that I cannot double back and try another.  

One of the unexpected things that I learned about myself during this year is the extent to which I have strong feelings about what is going on in this world.   The phases of my life up until now have been largely self-absorbing—focused on skill building, education, practicing.  I realize now that I have grown impatient with party politics, disgusted by environmental exploitation, and just plain disappointed in the way people deal with one another.   My future projects will be more outward focused, targeted at making a difference, albeit in small pockets of the universe.

A word of advice to those of you who would set yourselves up for a public challenge:  be realistic.  I confess I was hasty when I announced that I would write what amounts to a daily column every day for a year.  Every.  Day.  For.  A.  Year.  Even statisticians are allowed a margin of error.  I had to keep writing, even while on many vacations, or celebrating my second honeymoon, or when my children came home to visit, or during the holidays, or when I was flat out sick in bed.  To miss even one day would have meant automatic failure.  Remember that the first rule of engagement is to define your objective.  I needed to go with something simple, like “eliminate the target” instead of something monumental like “war on terrorism.”  But my tactics were a bit more forgiving.  As long as I wrote every single day it did not matter what I wrote.  Not every writer creates art every day.  So thank you, readers, for enduring the occasional Shakespearean sonnet.  They were good relaxation techniques for my writerhead.  Sometimes it is easier to say in iambic pentameter that which eludes us in prose.

I feel a need to point out that my stories are not intended as textbooks or encyclopedias.   I have written from my own point of view, including personal stories from my own life.   It is important as a writer to search for honesty and truth, learning to show, rather than to tell.   My stories have been exercises in various ideas, styles, topics, genres—whatever I felt I needed to try at the moment.  Some were personal.  Some were editorial.  Your scrutiny is part of the exercise and most of you have been very kind.

I have been surprised by how many people have asked what I planned for my final blog.  There is no magic here.  I had a job to do and now it has come to an end.   If I had one final wish it would be that I could write so compellingly about the importance of love, tolerance, and acceptance that everyone would pull their heels out of the dirt and start working together to achieve social justice, world peace, and human harmony.   I fear for us all in a world where everyone is intractable and extreme.   We can all use a little less “me” and a lot more “us.” 

But for those of you who prefer a little magic, I’ll simply “Puck” off:

 

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber'd here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles do not reprehend.

If you pardon, we will mend.