Remember the fear of groceries?

What was going to be my first blog post was written over a month ago….

We are living in an Orwellian snowglobe.  Our peaceful microcosm has suddenly been forcefully shaken and obscured by frenzied particles.  The frenzy is mesmerizing, but startling in its reach, and the particles, invisible and deadly, seem as though they lurked everywhere. For many, their sphere has been shattered and will never go back to peaceful.   ‘Before All of This’, is a memory now, and who knows what ‘After All of This’ will look like.

I wrote it before I had an actual blog or a website.  I didn’t appreciate that it would take far longer than I expected to learn how to build a blog and a website.  I also didn’t realize that there were some personal hurdles that I had to work through before I was comfortable leaping full frontal into social media, what Moira Rose calls ‘an amusement park for clinical narcissists’ and ‘a cauldron of self absorption’.   Funny, I thought like Moira.

With tens of millions of people out there looking for their next step, whether a job, a home business, or a paycheck of any kind, there must be millions of people turning to social media now to say ‘Here I am!”  So why would anyone want to follow me or read what I had to say in particular?   I scuffled around with that roadblock for a while. 

There is reluctance in many circles to talk about difficult issues that we think do not impinge on our daily life or financial interests.   

I wrote about the importance of community, and offered an invitation to join me in the hard work that needs to be done to openly discuss, learn and work through some serious issues in our local and global communities.   It’s hard to believe that anything could possibly have eclipsed the severity of COVID-19 since I wrote that post, yet the plague that is racism boiled into the streets around the world.   The final words of George Floyd, calling out to his mother with his cheek pressed to an asphalt pavement , are a searing testament to the redemption the world needs now. I am implicated; we are all implicated. But guilt doesn’t do anything. Understanding and action does. We all need to reflect, and do what is necessary to pave another path.

Stephen Colbert asked ‘Remember when we were afraid of our groceries?’ That fear now seems quaint.

The recent events in America, where I was born and raised, have solidified my resolve to move forward with  pattyhargreaves.com.    You can find what was going to be my first blog post here.

Let’s shine a light together and try to figure out a way forward while showcasing the good work that is being done.  Join me in my journey.