Yet, although what will meet me there is not yet visible to the eye,  I can feel the energy of it and it is utterly soothing and welcoming & irresistible.

When I wrote that on January 9, I was referring to that which would find me on this new pathway opening to me. I could sense it.  I knew it was coming.  Intuition.

There have been no posts to this blog since January 9.  No words.

Let’s call it an awakening of the soul.  I know now what I want & what I need that my heart can sing.

Just a little way to go along the pathway.  Following the crumbs.  A few more steps & I’ll be there with that which waits for me but is still out of view.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

A quote attributed to George Elliot & somewhat encouraging not only to the late bloomers of planet earth but also to everyone who wakes up one morning to find that their life has ended up being different than they would like it to be.

Everybody takes stock of their life at certain points along the way. That’s how we fine tune the game plan, though some of us may have operated for great portions of our life cruising on autopilot & letting life happen to us rather than creating it for ourselves.  Looking out through the window pane at life & all of it’s opportunities just passing us by.

I know what that is like. I did that for a long, long time.  I’m the queen of the window view seat.

It’s a glorious day when we decide then to join the game of life again whether we are hurled there in a daze with a thud out of a major life crisis or we arrive there more gently in a gradual and considered fashion.

That moment where perspective changes and suddenly what is possible can be imagined & visualised is the point at which the future begins to unfold with wonder.  The pivotal moment.

There’s something exquisite about stepping into a world of glorious possibilities from the point of a thunderbolt of epiphany.  Such a gift.  The only thing greater than it in this earthly experience is to experience love.

I’m presently in a delicious period of such reinvention and the horizon is open with a myriad of future options ready for me to write the script.

I’m finding that that the universe is responding with some astonishing synchronicities and signs to encourage me along the beautiful new pathway that beckons me, my beautiful new pathway, though from where I stand presently, I can’t yet see exactly what it is that waits for me there.  Yet, although what will meet me, what will find me just a little way further down that path, is not yet visible to the eye,  I can feel the energy of it and it is utterly soothing and welcoming and irresistible.

Confession.  Ena Rawle is not my real name.

I’m not crazy about the name.  Ena Rawle chose me really.  I wanted a pseudonym which connects to me and Ena Rawle was just the way the cards fell.

People reading this blog who know me very very well may be able to take Ena Rawle & arrive at my real name, but they would have to be thinking laterally and paying attention to the clues.

It’s a bit of fun.

It’s also my blog mask for the time being.

So, to whom is Ena writing?

Ena writes to her secret diary, her very public secret dairy, which for whatever reason you have come upon and now find yourself peering into.

I’m a real life drama queen.My life thus far has been anything but boring.  Unexpected.  Surprising. Unconventional.  Avant-garde.  Alternate.  Mysterious.  Shocking.  Turbulent.  Scandalous.

I’ve experienced so many bizarre things, spectacular happenings & out of the box life experiences, well, let’s just say that I could keep you entertained for quite a while with my true life stories and you would be excused for thinking that I was making them up.

This is no mean feat for somebody with a start to life as ordinary and conservative as my own.  It’s not as if I was born the child of revolutionaries or something.  I could have been Beaver Cleaver’s sister.

My great grandmother was a bit of a character however & led an unconventional life & a passionate one running away with her lover to live a kind of travelling circus life.  Scandalous for her day.  I have a wonderful photo of her with a snake draped around her neck like an exotic feather boa.

Perhaps there is a genetic component.

But some people seem to have such straight forward lives don’t they.  Consistent and secure and  stable.  Ordinary.  Unremarkable. Predictable. Constant.  One long term boyfriend or girlfriend becomes life long husband or wife.  One career.  One address for forty years.  A set safe formula put in place early on and set to repeat every week like clockwork for the rest of their lives.

That’s what life is like for some folks.

And then there are people like the mistress of the blog.

It seems to me that I’ve been given the perfect writer’s life.  A field of rich life experiences and lessons from an early age upon which to draw.  A cast of real life characters to excite Dickens.  Real life plots & twists & situations reminiscent of a great psychological thriller.  But most valuable of all for the writer, a heart shattered into a thousand pieces long ago.

That sounded a tad Miss Haversham & I digress.  I was going to talk to you about reinventing oneself.

Change, especially drastic change is very uncomfortable for many people, but change can be invigorating & a blessing.

Several times in my life I have completely reinvented myself.  I’m not talking new hairstyle here & a makeover.  I don’t just mean reinventing myself a little bit either.  I mean completely reinventing myself.  The whole hog.  Everything & all at once.  New job. (New career on several occasions). New home.  New partner.  New stuff.  New start.  New name.  Bang.  Overnight.  Whole new life.

In each instance, the universe has booted me onto the next path in spectacular fashion & after the crescendo or should I say explosion, the pieces have fallen in a brand new pattern heralding a fresh start with all things new & nothing of the past left to take along for the ride except memories unable to be erased.

The image which comes to mind would be that of tarot’s The Tower card,  the tower struck by lightning, where life forces tumultuous upheaval & often with considerable loss and discomfort to clear out what no longer serves in order to bring in necessary change.

This life has been a spectacular ride thus far & it doesn’t look like changing any time soon.

In these early days of the new year I’m looking forward to the next chapter as it unfolds for one knows not what lies around the next corner & life is nothing if not endlessly fascinating.  It is going to be very interesting indeed to see what 2009 reveals.

Yesterday I did lunch at the Windsor Hotel in South Perth with girlfriends.

Having received the complete boxed set of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares for Christmas, I’ve been spending quite a few hours with Gordon over the last couple of days.  I’m struggling here not to launch into a kind of mini food critique peppered with lots of ‘f’ word nouns, adjectives and adverbs Gordon Ramsay style,  so I won’t tell you that the food was really very good, nor very quietly that although the waitress got two out of five main courses wrong,  she was otherwise so attentive & friendly that we didn’t mind that much.

It was one of those lunches which was a little like limp lettuce despite the fact that there was one person at the table, the friend of a friend, who was out for a big afternoon & as the champagne flowed revealed to the party with unfortunate consistency approximately half hourly that she was minus underwear.   As we were all straight women at the table, & most of us barely knew her, this held little interest for us and progressively less as the afternoon wore on.

Everybody else at the table was more than a little shellshocked from the demands of the whole December Christmas crescendo thing – & one came to the table from a sick bed the day before,  so it was indeed an odd mix of the seasonally subdued & burned out by Christmas & Ms No Nickers out for a very very good time.

We moved to a table on the Mend Street verandah for another glass of champagne after lunch, a good position for someone like our nickerless luncheon companion really as eye contact or more can be made with flirtatious gentleman in nice cars stopped at the intersection of Mill Point Road.  It would actually be possible to run out and stop cars were one so inclined.

In the end, the afternoon sun became a little intense for my liking which was my cue to exit & I tottered off back to the hills for a delicious late afternoon siesta leaving Ms No Nickers behind at the Windsor shamelessly & proudly self promoting her bare au natural bottom to all of those in earshot.

Not sure if I’ll have the pleasure of having lunch with the Ms Nickers free again, but if I were to find myself at such a gathering,  I rather fancy jumping in with the whole of the rest of the table whoever they may be to steal her thunder – premeditated underwear status reports right up front – to cut her off at the pass so to speak before the first glass of wine.

“Hi.  I’m Paul.  Great to meet you.  Not a stitch. ”

“Wendy.  Me neither. ”

“Hi.  Chris.  You guessed it!”

Something is seriously awry.  It’s mid afternoon on Christmas Eve and I’m drinking tea.  Earl grey tea.  Calmly.  I don’t seem to have any shopping to do.  Gifts are wrapped.  I’m feeling decidedly calm.

It’s December 24 and in the lead up to the great day I haven’t had one blood relative even trying to give me a headache or a trip to the emergency room over arrangements for Christmas Day.

I am void of pre Christmas anxiety.  No gnawing dread in the pit of my stomach.  No palpitations.  No migraine.  No cold sweat.  No guilt.

It’s a miracle.  A real life Christmas miracle.

Or maybe I’m dreaming .  .  .

No.  I’m going with the Christmas miracle explanation.   I’m feeling so anxiety free that this state can only be a heavenly gift from the Christmas angels.

Of course it may be helping a tad that I am not going any further tomorrow than down the hill to the Rose & Crown at Guildford for a relaxed Christmas Day garden breakfast having successfully dodged the extended family luncheon in the interests of preserving health & happiness & sanity.

The alternative would have seen me attending the dreaded luncheon with protective accessories – ear muffs to prevent me hearing nonsense,  a gag to stop me saying the inevitable & some kind of alcoholic sedation, perhaps via straw through the gag – to get me through the whole thing without incident or an early & spectacular exit, forced or otherwise.

I must say though to be fair, that my sister Penelope did invite me.  I made the guest list.  I did receive an invitation & I believe it was an entirely genuine one issued despite brother Digby’s preferences.  It was however one of those invitations where one is damned if one does and damned if one does not.

I decided it was preferable to wear any criticism I may attract for declining my sister’s invitation rather than risk having Digby on my phone or doorstep telling me in his delicate fashion why I should not be attending & by extension threatening to ruin not only his Christmas but also that of his wife, blah blah blah, and of course taking the opportunity to remind me, again,  of all of my failings and sins against him over the last quarter of a century.

Yawn.

That and the fact that it would be impossible for me to listen to copious amount of mischievous untruth over lunch without speaking up for the absent and persecuted who this year will be my former brother in law Gerry & his new bride Jillian.

The path of least resistance.

On the contrary.  I am looking at a totally relative free & obligation free Christmas Day.  I feel like dancing.

The other night I attended Carols In The Valley at Sandalford Winery in the Swan Valley, & there under the starlight amidst thousands of flickering candles I saw a shooting star in the sky and made a wish.  I didn’t spend my wish on a request for peace with the relatives at Christmas.  I assigned it to the intention dearest to my heart.  My secret wish.

Who knows.  Perhaps this lovely state I find myself in today is an offshoot two for one Christmas bonus.

Miracles happen.

Sedate me December 1st until Boxing Day when it is all over.  I’m one of those people who find December draining.  I really do.

I struggle with the whole Christmas joy thing.  The crass commercialism bothers me,  & the greedy materialistic expectations of the horribly spoiled,  but that’s not all.  The whole obligation thing irritates me.

Why in fact does everybody feel the desperate need to see me before or on Christmas Day when I don’t feel the need to see some of them at all & in many cases have dodged seeing them for twelve months?  Why must I buy a bunch of people I rarely see a gift, one they neither want nor need?  Why must I be the catalyst for an outpouring of festive season backlash when I announce I will not be attending a Christmas Day luncheon with blood relatives & those acquired by marriage whom I find to be just not very nice?

I could go on, but you get my drift.

I am one of those souls who find it difficult to fake it, but I’ve noticed that Christmas seems to make most people fine actors and actresses.  Knives normally firmly implanted in backs become invisible as hypocrisy sets in – in the spirit of the season of good will to all men – as people are forced together at Christmas tables with those they don’t much care for or flat out despise.  Silly hats and crackers break the ice & the loathed and the loathing take turkey together with trimmings whilst Bing Crosby sings White Christmas in the background.

The cynic in me finds Christmas a gruelling time of year, every aspect of it,  though I find it interesting from the point of view of a snapshot of human behaviour.

But here’s the thing dear readers.  If I hold my hand on my heart & peer into my soul, I have to admit that the need to express my festive season cynicism stems from the deep root of my own bottomless sadness for that which has nothing to do with Christmas.  Sad, sad memories of that which is lost to me reflected in every piece of tinsel & every Christmas light.

I have also to confess that I am not immune to the emotional charge of that period around midnight on Christmas Eve when for just a little while, there seems to be some magic in the skies.  One can almost hear the distant tinkle of bells, a bittersweet window for memories &  reflection, for secret longing & yearning, and for deepest wishes to be made upon the stars.

The common thread between my exes, my former mother in law & every past work colleague I ever knew is that any or all of them could stumble upon this blog & start reading.

Very easy to write absolutely anything and share it with complete strangers many of whom could be in other countries or continents. Not so comfortable to be parading your all to people who know you, and especially not to people who once knew you – past tense.

So it bears considering when writing a blog like this to think about the audience. Just who indeed could conceivably see this blog?

The sad answer of course is all of the above & many more. Throw in mother, hairdresser, former best friend & any or all former clients or employers.

So what is the blog writer to do? Does one factor the worst case scenario blog reader into the mix when creating each new blog post ?

One would then for example avoid telling amusing former mother in law tales lest the former mother in law stumble across them & discover much worse than that the chowder she asked whether you had made yourself in 1987 really was canned Baxter’s.

As OIC of this blog, certainly there is no desire to cause discomfort to any other soul. Yet, this degree of concern – or perhaps it is really just plain blog writer’s paranoia – would be so creatively stifling. So many topics and stories would be ‘off limits’ to avoid issues lest certain ghosts of the past or present find this blog & recognise their own past life experiences adorning it and to protect the mistress of the blog herself indeed.

That won’t do.

It’s either 100% blog writing freedom or nothing methinks.

I have the gentle reassurance of the bejewelled mask of my pseudonym for now with which to blur myself, though who knows dear readers, perhaps the mask may be elegantly dipped at some future stage without warning.

The blogging begins.

I’ve been toying with actually posting something to this blank blog for months now. You know how it is. The whole blocked writer thing.

I can’t decide whether this blogging is harmless indulgence in some irresistible banter or dancing with danger on a knife edge. Perhaps something in between.

Depends of course upon how much of an open heart one brings to the blog. A candid, no holds barred, warts & all outpouring, or a carefully cryptic anonymous dialogue. To blog or not to blog at all? That is one question. The second is how one might blog?

So many variables to consider for the writer blocked .

But I digress. I was telling you that this blog, even once it had been created, (and that was after months of existing only in my imagination) stared back at me for some time as nothing more than a blank page. A wordless would be blog.

Suddenly though, it happened. A shift. Perhaps a life changing break through. A change in perspective. Epiphany. A day where I did something different.

I stepped out of my cosy but uncomfortable denial just long enough to ask myself exactly how many more days of my life did I plan to fritter away dithering & running my eternal all the reasons why not story to myself with foot poised but never quite daring to take the step forward into the creative & life possibilities which await me? One day? Three days? Thirty days? A year? A decade?

I was confronted with the fact that I could continue on, changing nothing & resting upon my writer’s block story & confidently know that I would watch the rest of my life remain the same, one blocked writer day ticking into yet another blocked writer day & then another & then another. The days running into weeks and months and years of hollow dreams & blank pages.

A funny thing happened when I got honest with myself. I was confronted with the face of my writer’s block & I saw that it was in fact nothing but plain garden variety fear. Nothing special. Just fear of being open, authentic, revealed, exposed, known, seen, heard, visible, vulnerable, bared, discovered & understood.

The odd thing is that part of me wants to be all of that & be completely laid bare, totally ‘out there’, laundry out to dry, skeletons out of the closet, completely me warts & all, nothing held back. How truly cathartic that would be. Do I dare?

The other part of me, the private part of me would be the anonymous blogger, yet I wonder how much fun that would be darting around in the shadows limited by concerns about preserving one’s anonymity?

It’s easy for me to do that. It’s my natural tendency to fly under the radar. To be removed , private. To travel incognito.

Sometimes though it is bliss to break out of the box & reinvent one’s self in spectacular fashion despite initial discomfort. Perhaps that is what is happening here.

The blogging begins . . .