When I started Dragonfly Reflections in 2007, it was at least partly about having a place to park my name when I commented on other blogs. Over time, it became so much more than that – a place to share my experiences, my dreams, my mistakes… all in all, it became the place where I parked my heart.
A LOT has changed since those early days… back in 2007, I was a yoga nut – practicing daily, working on a teaching certification, planning the rest of my life with yoga at its center. I was fully ensconced in corporate America – still somewhat career-minded, with retirement as a distant dream. I was also a fairly new empty nester – feeling my way through the world as an individual vs. somebody’s mom.
Today, I’m working to approach my life from a more balanced perspective. I’ve rounded out my original single-minded yoga focus with art, walking, good food and stress-reduction practices. I’ve left corporate America behind and am working to excavate the skills and experience I gathered throughout my 30-year career and adapt them to a new path. And, I’ve come to terms with the empty nest – have come to love it, in fact, as an opportunity to sink into myself and grow in ways I never imagined when I was busy raising my daughter.
Blogs and bloggers are a diverse lot – I see many people who’ve kept the same blog for years on end and I see others who change to new blogs with some regularity. Some people, like me, have blogs that represent their lives in general; while others pick a particular topic and focus on that alone – maybe even maintaining multiple blogs to represent their ranging interests. One thing I know is that I am not someone who can maintain multiple blogs. For one thing, I tend to be a woman of few words (any of you who know me will probably chuckle a little at that understatement) and I worry about having enough content for multiple blogs. For another thing, I don’t believe I could successfully divide myself between multiple blogs. I don’t fault anyone who does, but it feels a little like child rearing to me – I’m not sure I would have been good at spreading my affections across multiple children and I’m not sure I could spread my attention across multiple blogs either.
Soooooo, after much pondering and waffling, I’ve decided to close the chapter on Dragonfly Reflections and open a new blog, onejanuaryday.com, and you’ll notice I’ve even taken the HUGE (for me) step of registering a domain!!
Dragonfly came from a place of deep transformation at a time when I was working hard to juggle the me I wanted to be with the me I had to be to fit the world I lived in at the time. Because dragonflies are such transformational creatures, it seemed especially fitting to hang my virtual placard from their tails. Today, I find myself less in a state of transformation and more in a place of beginning anew. While I’m sure new transformations await, I feel less like changing and more like settling in… to who I am and who I’m meant to be. JanuaryDay will give me a chance to reorient and also to gather my eggs in the same basket; sort of a branding thing that I feel I need to do with the new etsy shop and other dreams I’m chasing down this twisty turny new path.
The Dragonfly archives will remain here, just in case anybody (besides me) is interested in where it came from and how it evolved, and JanuaryDay will start fresh. It will still be largely a personal blog, as Dragonfly has been, but I’ll probably talk a little about what I’m making and selling too – although, I promise to balance the two topics and not bore you too much with the marketing hoo-ha.
I thank you so very much for your dedication to me and Dragonfly over the last five years – it has truly meant the world to me! As the Dragonfly chapter of my life concludes, here’s to a bright future for One January Day – I hope you’ll join me.
blessings,
Kelley
)!!
