I have a rosebush that my grandmother started from a twig she plucked from a bush at her mother’s home some sixty years ago.  When we sold my grandmother’s home, I dug up that very same bush and hauled it eighteen hundred miles to plant at my home, where it has flourished. I keep starting new bushes from it, and last spring I took one of those little beginners a thousand miles to plant at my son’s new home. The small thing instantly began growing with pretty shoots and verdent green leaves, which son’s dog promptly chomped off. Eventually the dog ate the entire bush– yes, thorns and all–right down to the ground! Now the dog is gone (She tended to want to chew on neighbors and delivery people, too, so a new home with a fence had to be found.) and, if you look closely at where the bush is planted, you can see the promise of green life stirring yet again.

 That’s me and this blogging site. Each time I put forth a new piece of writing here, along comes life and chomps me right off.  Such is the way with any good endeavor, anything that is creative in nature. Resistance, Steven Pressfield names it in his book, The War of Art, saying that the more important the action is to our particular soul’s growth, the more Resistance we will encounter while we pursue it. He capitalizes Resistance, giving it personification.

There is always another chance…This thing called failure is not the falling down but staying down.   — Mary Pickford

The thing is to keep getting up and trying again. You will get somewhere, and very often it is far further and in a direction more grand than you ever imagined. My efforts at this blog have led me to decide to install a blog at my own url. Easy everyone said. Ha! But, oh, what an adventure! And often I think of that little rosebush, and smile.