The Whole Wide World

Last Thursday, when I was lounging and scrolling on the internets, I added putting more pages to this site on my to-do list. Maybe an about me page, a summary of my Tuscarora Trail and Laurel Highlands Trail hikes, maybe a bit on the Peak District hiking from last summer…lots of adventures to write about. Of course, I’m still going to keep up with 100-Days of Darkness, but I am going to add more content to The Whole Wide World. This came about after spending hours looking at other people’s beautifully curated blogs. The Type One (Enneagram) in me had to feign off thoughts that my blog is inferior to all the wonderful blogs I came across. I think I’ve gotten in a bad habit of comparing lately. Not just the blogs, but people and things, and I know better than to fall into the trap of comparing.

It also was a little reminder that I have a tendency to just jump in. I’m not much for dipping my toe in first. Like the time I went on a section hike of the Appalachian Trail only to come home and sell my couch, pretty much the next day, because I’d decided I was going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Immediately. Which, after living without a couch for a few weeks, I realized takes a wee bit of planning. Fast forward through one year of living without a couch, tying up lots of loose ends, and I began my thru-hike.

The same could be said about this blog. Towards the end of summer, I stumbled across a book called 100 Days of Solitude, which was the inspiration for this writing project. Creating a website and blog had long been on my to-do list, I just needed a little shove and long dark winter to create space. I jumped right into setting it up one Thursday, bought the domain and the WordPress package, and started playing around in WordPress. I have very little experience with WordPress and rather than watching some YouTube videos and doing some research, I just jumped in and started muddling. I spent almost forty-hours working on the first version of this site, only to completely delete the entire thing and start from scratch. I suppose it was a learning experience in its own right…and another example of jumping in. In addition to a little technical research, it would have been very beneficial to look at other peoples blogs before I dove into the painstaking adventure of setting this one up, but alas here we are and a work in progress is better than nothing.

After I wrote everything above, earlier today, I went for a walk and put on a podcast. Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us. I picked a random episode which happened to be part two of an interview with Richard Rohr. I have not listened to part one yet. Halfway through the episode, and I can’t even remember what they were talking about, Brene said something along the lines of well isn’t that just so Enneagram type one of me, comparing and judging.

I honestly couldn’t believe it. I haven’t listened to her talk about Enneagram’s recently, or about comparing, didn’t know she was a type one, nothing, and here I wrote an entry about this the other day and then this one today, just minutes before hearing Brene talk about the exact topics. My head is still spinning dizzy.