Tamara Descoryphées Tamara Descoryphées

Where random blossoms in bright bursts of color catch my attention… My thoughts meander, and my heart expands. Welcome to my garden.

I’m starting to realize that a reason I have struggled to get my book finished is because I have ADD. So many things are interesting to me. And I’ve had the good fortune of being able to learn things quickly and to gain confidence and skill rapidly. Along the way of living my life I have mastered many disparate skills, and excelled at several wildly different careers. Yet, I’ve never felt I have done anything that has really amounted to much. I’ve often tried to find my one purpose. My one passion. But I have so many passions that I get overwhelmed. Sometimes I’ll do a little bit of some thing and then a little bit of something else, and then get excited about something altogether different. It’s been a challenge to get things completed, or to stick with one thing long enough to call it my true path.

This is certainly true with trying to write a book. First of all, which book is it that I want to write? A guide with key self help points for women who are in transition in their lives? A coffee table art book with poetry and collage to illustrate the fundamentals of astrology and universal cycles of change in a gorgeous and inspiring way? An autobiography with yet another account of rising from the ashes of the dysfunction of the Deep South in the 1970’s? Second, where do I want to start on that book? Do I make an outline and then tackle chapter by chapter? Do I write where the flow takes me and then see how it fits in? Do I cite references as I go along, or do I do that on another pass through? Ugh. Each time I get started, I get discouraged. I think I don’t know enough. I better do some more research. Then something else captures my attention and I’m off in another direction. It can be very frustrating. So I’m choosing now to allow myself a space, a place, to let my thoughts meander, to practice each day just following the thought of the moment. And to practice some skills in the task of writing. I’m learning dictation and I’m learning blogging. Editing and tagging, and uploading to social platforms. This way I hope to gather the skills that I need to put it all together and create, finally, my book(s).

A while back, I think in 2015, I heard a podcast where Elizabeth Gilbert said that she had stopped telling people, “Just follow your passion.“ She realized that for some percentage of the population, maybe 10%, maybe 40%, that was a very discouraging thing to be told. So many of us have been looking around, trying to discover what our true passion is. Trying to discern where we could best appropriately put our love and our attention and our finances and our study, so that we could offer our special gift to the world. To people like me, who find so much pleasure in so many different directions, that mandate was very daunting and ultimately impossible to pursue. So she said she’s changed how she talks to people now. She says, “Follow your curiosity”.

This blog will help me journal and report upon the various paths my curiosity takes me as I try to get my life in order.

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