Just as Picasso had his blue and rose periods, I too succumbed to feelings of melancholy in my 40s and by 50, though my pallet was a bit more vibrant, the melancholy continued to permeate my writings.

I spent a few days re-reading some of my posts here on this site and found much too much time was spent on angst.  Instead of spending too much time picking and choosing what I will keep and what to let go I had an epiphany, let it all go.  Sometimes letting go does wonders for the soul and since it’s my party I can and will do what I want.

The other day I listened to Suze Orman talk about eliminating negative people from her life at 50.  I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard her say this because, at 50, I did the same only my way of explaining it was I needed to eliminate poison from my life.  I realized no good can come of having lots of friends when many of them do more to stunt your growth than encourage forward momentum.

Though Suze Orman is known as a “financial guru”, over the years I have noticed she has also taught the truth of suffering and how it can be used to wake us from our delusional thinking.  In one of her books, The Courage to Be Rich: Creating a Life of Material and Spiritual Abundance (Riverhead Books, 1999, 2002), she talked about material clutter and how we need to remove the clutter in order to make room for financial abundance.  It went a little deeper for me.  Clutter on any level binds us and prevents us from seeing what is to what can be and that pretty much sums up what I felt about this blog and some of the posts here, which, on many levels, represented emotional clutter and I needed to rid myself of such clutter.

My blue and rose phases taught me I lack control.  I could not and cannot stop folks from dying and in terms of my personal health, it is what it is and that has always been the case.

So, going forward, what will this blog focus on?  I’m still mulling this over in my head.  A part of me wants to focus exclusively on lupus and health issues and perhaps I will use my other site to talk about other issues like art and photography.  Then again, perhaps nothing will change except my focus will be more on “I can” and not on ruckem suckem frickem frackem.