Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Caring for dirt

I've been thinking about blogging for a while now. I even have little draft posts drawn up and sitting in the folder, waiting to be published.
I haven't been writing lately, though I have had the deep desire to sift through my thoughts in a more public space. Maybe its because the issues I've been coming to conclusions on are more personal, and being discreet is hard and I don't want to give any person or organization a bad reputation. I can only tell my story, but lately my story has been colliding with a bunch of other people's stories and I don't know how to write yet in a way that won't hurt the people I'm writing about.
And I wonder if it's about time I've outgrown this blog. It's been here, chugging along, since my high school days and now I have just completed my second year of college and I'm in a far different stage of life than I was when I began writing here all those years ago. I think about starting a new blog, though that task seems daunting and I don't know if I'm brave enough to be faced with the job of starting all over.
Recently my blog friend Beth has been writing about caring for dirt.
 "because isn’t that what it’s like tending to seeds before they germinate, before they sprout? You water dirt. You care for dirt."
 That's what my life has been feeling like lately. I'm waiting and waiting for something to pop out of the darkness, for my dreams to grow and develop, and sometimes I see glimpses of something green, but in the mean time I'm caring for dirt.
I just finished up my second year of college (and it was a hard year, but that's another post) and I'm in that in-between stage. I'm packing up my room, knowing this will be the last time I step into the dorm as a student. I'm going to job interviews and asking questions about what I want my future to look like. My relationship seems to be in an in-between stage.
And I can see all of these green shoots about to poke up, and for things to come out of this darkness, but right now, in this moment, it feels a lot like tending to a pile of dirt.
Its frustrating and a lot of days I end up feeling sad. I dig and dig through the dirt, trying to find the seed I planted there as reassurance that better things are coming but as deep as I dig I don't reach the seed. I'm only pulling up fistfuls of dirt.
It requires faith, knowing that the seed I planted there is still there. All these things that I long for will grow. These fruits that I crave will shoot up from the ground in the form of a tiny green stalk because I planted them there.
I don't know what this next little bit will look like for me. All I know is that right now I'm caring for dirt. And I have faith that the seed I have planted will grow.