The writer Emile Zola (1840 – 1902) once said:
If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: I am here to live out loud!
Social media and technology have made it easier to “live out loud” than in Zola’s day, and perhaps not all of us are artists, but there’s something to the idea of being driven to share your creativity, to publish the “art” perceived from your own unique perspective.
My blog is now a toddler – the Glover Gardens Cookbook had its second anniversary on March 1 – and I’ve realized that having a forum for “living out loud” empowers and enables creativity in ways I never expected when I set out to capture my family’s treasured recipes and share new ones as they emerged (see About).
I have more than recipes to share, and my sense of the world and my surroundings has been heightened as I travel through it knowing I can share it with others in an boundaryless way.
I tackled some of this on the blog’s first anniversary in What I’ve Learned, and everything I said last year is more true now. I think in haiku and rhyme and prose, listen more carefully, hear others’ stories about life and know – in a bedrock way – that they should be captured, see and want to share things of interest on all sorts of topics, take better photos, and most importantly, have a stronger sense of simple pleasures and mindfulness.
Being in the moment is an incredible gift. The featured image above for this post with the near-frozen creek and the quote from Emile Zola is a great example: in central Colorado, in 12° weather, the wind was blowing up a chill factor of -5°, and when I saw the native grasses growing in the crook of Tarryall Creek growing strong but blowing sideways, I knew they would have to be shared with you. It was an immediate, indelible imprint of strength and vulnerability and the sheer awesomeness of nature. (Read more about that Colorado trip here.) Another photo from that trip is below.
My looking-at-the-world lens is sharper and more defined now that I’m experiencing it as an “artist” and have you to share it with – you inspire me. Thank you for following and supporting my blog and experiencing my world with me.
Copyright 2017, Glover Gardens Cookbook
Happy blogiversary my fellow blogger. Keep on blogging.