Glad to see some of you stayed in the car and are still willing to ride along with me on my journey! But we have a small problem. I’m not sure how to tell you this without scaring you, so I guess I’ll just spit it out. There’s no roadmap for this trip. And I’m still not exactly certain where we’re going. But I know I’m a pretty good driver, even though the road ahead appears to be a lot like me, and by that I mean it's a little curvy, pretty hilly in spots, and rough and awfully dark in some places. (And I’ve told you before about my irrational fear of the dark!)
To make matters more complicated, I think it’s starting to snow. So, if you’re scared, you’d better buckle up now or hop out while we’re still going slow. Because sometimes I tend to drive 90 miles an hour, pedal to the metal, with headlights off and windows down. And I frequently choose to ride without a seatbelt or a helmet. That’s just how I roll.
I know it seems right now as if we’re still on cruise-control because if you’ve been with me in this vehicle for a while, you know I’ve been struggling in my quest to become a blogger and a writer. I’ve spent a lot of time researching everything I can find on how to find my “true voice” and find a topic that makes me really excited to write, one that others will care to read about. Months after declaring myself to be !A WRITER!, I’m still searching to find some “thing” I care about, something that moves me so much, I want to share it with the world. And it’s incredibly frustrating to feel I have continued to fail in finding my “thing.” I know I want to live a life on FIRE, but it seems I can’t even find a spark to start the flame.
And then a thought occurred to me yesterday. What if the journey of trying to find my “thing”……. IS MY THING!? Because what I’ve found is that anytime I write about myself, and my own travels on this insane excursion we call “life,” my writing seems to flow like a flooded river, and the response I get is overwhelming and amazing. And WHAT IF THAT’S WHY YOU'RE IN THE CAR WITH ME?!
Nawwwwwww. That can’t be it. There are plenty of other people out there who write about their journey to self-discovery. I want to be different. Hell, I AM different, we all know that. It seems to me that writing about “finding myself” has been done by many others before me. If I wrote about myself, I’d be just a tiny snowflake in a massive blizzard of other stories. There is a virtual avalanche of narratives about finding a life that’s fulfilling and true to yourself. Nobody would be able to tell my story apart, and I’d be an insignificant snowflake in the blinding blizzard of self-awareness journeys. No one would care about MY snowflake, since snowflakes are rarely examined individually. And we all know, snowflakes are simply, collectively, just an insignificant part of “the snow” that makes a blizzard.
But the more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense. They say no two snowflakes are exactly the same, just as no two people or their stories are. In fact, they are all exceptionally different. And if you examine a snowflake closely, you will find each is extremely unique, intricately patterned, delicate yet robust, and wildly beautiful in it’s own way. If you catch a snowflake in your hand, you will find a fragile yet strong, tiny yet perfect, miracle of nature staring you in the face. One that’s survived a journey you can't imagine, and remained intact, beautiful in it’s own way, despite the raging storm.
In their design, snowflakes appear insubstantial and weak. It’s unimaginable that they can survive the bitter cold, the driving wind, the violent collisions with other objects, the fierceness of a winter night, without simply disintegrating. Yet they DO survive, maybe not forever, but long enough to accomplish their mission. They make it through the cold and sometimes the darkness, battered by the whims of the wind in their blizzard, yet they remain intact and float to the ground, undamaged and dazzling in their deceptively insubstantial way, where they remain until the sun comes out again. 
And it seems maybe that’s what I want to write about. I want to write about MY snowflake—and my beautiful storm of life--and how I’ve managed to remain just a little bit like a snowflake, despite my challenges. How I’ve found a way to retain what’s beautiful on the inside of myself and remain intact, even when the blizzard of life has betrayed me. I want to write about how, at the end of every shit-storm I’ve survived in this life (and there have been plenty), how even against all odds, at the end of every the day and after every storm, I’ve managed to find warm sunshine, cute puppy dogs, and beautiful rainbows.
And so it would seem after all this floundering about, I really just want to share my snowflakes with you. And my sunshine, puppy dogs, and rainbows. Luckily for all of us, I’m a good sharer. 
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