I have been feeling pretty bad lately… I haven’t been making the time to write and I have been feeling rushed and confined by a lot of the duties of my daily life. While I realize that my life is what I make of it and that if I want to change it I am the only one who can do so, a lot of things are getting in my way right now and that’s a bit frustrating. Between caring for The Man while he’s been sick (for going on SIX weeks now) with his various colds and things, work, family, home improvements, activities, and other social expectations it often seems like at the end of the day/week/month I’m running…

All around me things are shedding – my cats are in a constant state of sheddy-goodness, the trees have released their leaves to the ground (and the roofs, the bottom of boots, the street… and pretty much everywhere else), and the fields have yielded whatever harvest will be eked out from this summer’s dismal bounty.

As Samhain approaches I become more and more conscious of the wanting to let go, to leave things behind in this year and step through the veil into the new year.

So what do I wish to shed?

I wish to shed the desire for perfection. I realize that this is one of my “all or nothing” views that I have been oh-so-slowly and painfully…

Okay, I have to admit that when it comes to poetry, I’m woefully lacking some essential when it comes to poetry. I’ve tried, I really have… but although I love the way poetry sounds when read, reading it makes me feel terribly inadequate as a female human.

Whew… glad I could get that off my chest.

Anyway… the point is that the prompt comes from a line in a poem, Wild Geese by Mary Oliver (click if you want to read it yourself) that implores the reader to accept what they love, not to try and deny themselves for the sake of acceptance (and, if this is way off… just read the first paragraph and shake your head at…

So, since it seems that email is down (which means my missives from HQ are on hold) and it is lunchtime here in the work-a-day world, I decided to put some think-y-ness into this weeks’ Wishcast Wednesday in which Jamie Ridler asks:

What do you wish to fly free from?

I wish to fly free from SO many things lately:

• I wish to fly free from the need to work outside the home.
• I wish to fly free from the overarching financial anxiety that comes from being alone
• I wish to fly free from the feeling of loneliness
• I wish to fly free from the unreasonable expectations that people place on me – the simple fact is that

…

This couldn’t have come at a better time for me, since I have been thinking that a lot of my issues with connection have stemmed from an essential lack of confidence.

I wasn’t always this meek.

At least I don’t think I was.

I remember being told I was such a “fierce” girl, that I was going to do well in life… that I knew what I wanted and wasn’t going to let anyone else tell me that I couldn’t do that.

Who is that girl? Where did she go?

I wish for confidence in my SELF. I wish to know who I am, what I am meant to do. I wish for confidence in joining with other people. I…