It Started as One Thing, but Blossomed Into Something More
I love having this blog.
It started out with cooking and recipes as the Glover Gardens Cookbook and grew into something else, something more, something unexpected.
An outlet for creativity, and also a form of self care.
A channel for connections.
A conduit for collaboration.
A catalyst for curiosity and learning.
A catch-all for musings, reflections and realizations.
A place for poems, prayers and promises, to borrow a phrase from the late John Denver, and pictures, lots of pictures.
A multifaceted blog that had to be renamed to simply, Glover Gardens, to capture its multifaceted nature.
A Gestalt Thing
Glover Gardens is a gestalt thing for me, in the definition from the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary:
“a set of things, such as a person’s thoughts or experiences, that is considered as a single system that is different from the individual thoughts, experiences, etc. within it”.
I really like that idea, that for me, the blog has become something much more than the sum of its parts. It’s an experience that I’m living, enhanced by connections with and ideas from you, Dear Readers, in all the places and ways that we intersect. Truly, the blog has exceeded my wildest expectations in terms of personal growth and enrichment. I didn’t know until I got into it that what I would gain from it would surpass what I put into it.
Or is It Just Random?
I was going to go all “glass half empty” in this dialogue, I could also say that the Glover Gardens blog and what I like to deem multifaceted could just seem somewhat random to a new reader.
If you landed here searching for recipes because of a Facebook chat about raspberry nut bars or sweet potato biscuits and landed on poetry, would that seem random?
Or if you clicked on a pointer to Glover Gardens from a popular blog about writing and expected poetry but got a travel-related post, would that be confusing?
Or maybe you really like jazz and came to these pages because you saw a post about our Musical Millennial or watched a live-stream I promoted, and the first thing you encountered was
… a whimsical haiku… or a lament about social justice … or a memoir about my grandmother, who died almost 2 years ago at 100 years, 1 month and 1 day … or an ode to mustard (yes, I did that) … or my series about gumbo which finally ended with the recipe … or my deeply personal series about suicide, hoping to prevent that irreversible choice for even one person … or a London restaurant rave …
… would it all just seem random?
Overthinking is a Waste of Time
Every couple of years, I ask myself that question: is it too multifaceted?
Should I focus on just one major topic?
But how could I ever choose between:
- Cooking / food / recipes / my beloved new kitchen / foodiness
- Travel and restaurants
- Poetry of all sorts (even if I’m not good at it, I love it)
- Memoirs and family tales
- Music
- Mindfulness
- Lifelong learning, like photography
- Nature – water, wind and land, birds and beasts, flowers and gardens
- General musings about this journey called life and being alive in this amazing and confusing world
I couldn’t make that choice, couldn’t leave any of my topics behind. No more could I separate them into different blogs, because they’re interrelated, in a gestalt kind of way. 😊
So I’m deciding that no, I don’t need to overthink it any more, that it’s either multifaceted or random, depending on your point of view – and that’s ok. Glover Gardens remains “a multifaceted blog for multifaceted people”.
In one way or another, we’re all random. Actually, we’re all gestalt.
Every human is a gestalt thing, more than the sum of his / her / their parts.
I Leave You with a Haiku
The cover photo for this random / gestalt post was posted before, with this haiku:
That may seem random, but it’s my truth.
In what ways are you multifaceted, random, gestalt?
© 2022, Glover Gardens
Listen to what Jon Ivy, Lauren Jobs and Tim Cook have to say about Steve Jobs had to say about numbers and quality. When he returned from exile, Jobs found that Apple made forty products. He cut the ‘them to four and made them the very best in the world. That’s all you need to know.
I would agree with you 100% if Glover Gardens was a commercial undertaking – and if I get serious about the cookbook again when I retire, I’ll pull it out as you suggested before and do the Glover Gardens Cookbook as a standalone. But for now, there’s nothing commercial about it, no ‘products’ at all, just a big ol’ share fair.
I love the variety of your blog. I too have had to ignore all those over the years who have insisted that a blog has to be focussed to be successful- whatever that means. Your blog is a reflection of you – and you’re not Steve Jobs!
Thank you, Euan, you said in a single sentence (“your blog is a reflection of you”) what it took me about ten paragraphs to express.
Your blog is yours and so should be whatever you want it to be! I think Euan put it very well.