Transitions

                After retiring from the military after 20 years and leaving my government job after 11 years, I adventured out to become more involved in my church and to write.  In reality, I traveled down the road of new self discovery, a new definition.  Lately, I find myself still wondering who I am now that the military is in my past. 

The other day, I sat in a beautiful living room with a whimsical fish hanging in a little alcove above windows with wooden shutters giving the room an airy feel.  I almost expected a salty breeze to come through the room transporting me to one of my favorite places, the beach.  Across from me sat one of my mentors, a delightful lady who has been in my life for twenty-six or so odd years, my mother-in-law.

                “I really feel you are in transition.”  The statement gave me pause. 

Another comment during the talk, “writer doesn’t define Lisa” left me wanting to scratch my head. 

The conversation left me wondering, who is Lisa.  How do I define myself?  The obvious is wife, mother, daughter, and sister.  There is also Catholic, prior Protestant, conservative, retired staff sergeant, writer, photographer, gardener, crafty, musical, creative, driven, and the list goes on.  Yet, after I retired, I put my military self to the side and strove to be a Catholic writer leaving many of the other definitions by the wayside.  This past November, I realized I missed writing fantasy.  In about March, my desire to blog began to lag.  Other areas of my life started losing their value of fulfillment.  That wise woman was right, I am in transition.

                Now for the hard question, where do I go from here?  In a week, I am taking my first photography class.  I am giddy with anticipation to learn more in the area.  Besides taking spectacular pictures, I am going to apply what I learn to book covers because my other goal is to start indie publishing my writing.  Eventually, this will lead to a website and who knows.  I am learning in leaps and bounds in the area of the arts.  I have so many ideas and projects sparking fires that I have about three lifetimes of work ahead of me.

I also decided to change my blog.  When I began The Journey to Holiness, my dear friend just died from cancer.  I marveled at her strength and faith.  I wanted to emulate that and to bring meaning to our lives through faith.  I did hesitate and wonder about creating a blog about Lisa or one about writing.  In the end, I wrote about faith.  I loved the topic, but have felt confined.

When originally researching blogs, many of them focused on one idea, boxed in with parameters.  I am not good at being put in a box.  Thus, I am going to change to a Lisa blog.  I am going to talk about all things that define me with the goal of learning more of who I am.  I will chat about my frustrations with technology as I learn to format and load books onto Smashwords and Kindle.  I will definitely promote my writing once it is available.  I will explore my mass reflections when so inspired.  Watch out, because I may even become political from time to time.

The title of my blog, as can be seen from above, is changing to simply Lisa Nixon-Richard; however, I am keeping this address until I create a web page.  So stay tuned and farewell.