I recently attended a class geared toward teaching me how to Blog.  My business needs expansion and exposure.  I know I need to embrace internet marketing, and particularly I need to embrace social networking.  I paid for the class, and I’m even excited about it, albeit somewhat anxious about weather or not I can overcome a long standing “techonophbia”.  Bottom line is, if I want to stay in business, I have to be competitive in a new business environment.  I have no choice about this.

Actually attending the class has been an incredible learning experience for me, but not in the way I expected.  What I discovered, firsthand, is that bringing anything new into our lives is a challenge.  Change forces us to change the whole way we look at the world and the way we see ourselves in it.  This is where the challenge lies.  For example, in learning to blog I am learning a new way to communicate my voice…not on the phone or “in person”, but in this other way that is very exciting and holds enormous potential….but…this is not the world as I have always known it.  Change forces us to come to terms with loss of the world as we knew it.  Things are not the way they used to be, and there is some sadness in that.  There is a reason to grieve.  What I noticed as I began to have some technological problems in the bloglab, was that I became very anxious.  Feelings of inadequacy flooded me as I fell further and further behind the rest of the class.  I began to feel like I was in the middle of the anxiety dream where there is a test and you realize  you have not studied.  I don’t like feeling these feelings and a very big part of me wanted to escape.  That part of me wants to tell the story of “I cant do this”, because it is easier to be in this story than to actually feel those feelings of loss…that “longing “ for a bygone era that sometimes overtakes me.  In our culture we don’t acutally make room for grief, and are instead urged to “move on”.  In my view, this is a mistake.  I believe we need to actually feel all of the feelings that come up when we go through any kind of transition in our lives.  The feelings are a gateway to expansion of the self, and an opportunity to grieve not only this loss, but all that have come before.

Having said this, I end with a new intention.  The intention is to look head on into the future of my life…clear eyed and unblinking  I’d like to face these fears of blogging, aging, future losses,…whatever life has in store….BRING IT ON