Beginning again and again

We are entering Week 3 of the Soul of a Pilgrim online retreat I am participating in. I wanted to assess where I'd been in the desert of my exploration of this journey and decided to create a slideshow/video of my progress by using my mandalas and photographs as the map. You can see my progress HERE.

It was fun, exciting and rewarding to learn something new, to explore my journey and find my truth illuminated in my creative expression.

That made me think of how I could enrich my journey with my beloved -- by creating a video of the first 21 poems I've written him since Valentine's Day.

Thought leads to action and so, yesterday morning, excited about the prospects of creating a video for him, I sat down at my computer to play.

And I played. And I played. For four hours. And when I was finished, I was excited about the results. (and yes, I admit it, I can be compulsive...)

The final transition perfected, I hit upload, and that's when the trouble started.

File corrupted. No go. Sorry. You're screwed. No video to access. Not gonna happen. (ok so the 'unseen hand of the cyber-nerds' didn't quite put it that way but that's how it felt.)

I... softcore cursed, I'm not into hardcore cursing -- this is a family show too you know!

After a few minutes of 'what on earth is going on', I decided to figure it out.

One hour later, after exploring all the possibilities at the root of my connection issues, I had fixed the problem. But I could not find my video. It just wasn't there.... no video meant no poem and I contemplated what to do next.

And I am reminded of one of the many lessons from my Soul of a Pilgrim retreat -- Where ever you're at, always begin again. 

In between, C.C. and I Skype (when did to Skype become a verb?) and he casually mentions the lack of poem that day.  I tell him my woes but am secretly delighted. The poems have become part of the rhythm of our day.

I begin again and spend the next two hours in delightful creativity. It's very different I know because I had written that day's poem as a thread running through the slides -- and did not have a hard copy of my words.

But, finally, happy with the result, I click upload.... and this time it works!

And he is pleased with his gift and my heart is happy.

And then.... I find the original version still on my computer!

What a gift.

Both video poems are very different. Yet both speak of Love.

I am grateful.

In learning something new, I discovered there's always room for more and in that more, beauty unfolds and unfolds and unfolds.

And in the process, me and the 'unseen hand of the cyber-nerds' had a conversation and they get my point -- no sense beating them over the head with my ire. They're rather testy little fellas' -- ya' know what I mean?