“When I’m with you, it doesn’t matter where we are, or what we’re doing, I’m here that’s all that matters”.  – Chicago, “Beginnings”, by Robert Lamm

I’m here – that’s all that matters.

When Cowbird.com turned off its interactivity components exactly two years ago, I was scrambling to find another site to use for my daily storytelling. Cowbird had gotten me into the habit of writing every day – a good thing for an aspiring writer. It was an immediate reaction to joining that site – it had an energy, and level of intimacy in the interactions with other writers, that I took to like a duck to water. I wrote every day for five years. I posted more stories than any other writer there, over 2,000.

After Cowbird’s demise, I checked out a few other sites, most notably Medium and WordPress. I apparently was initially leaning towards WordPress as my new home writing site, as I must have registered and paid for a subscription to it.

I’m not sure exactly what I did then, but shortly after, some other Cowbird refugees started a publication on Medium, called “The Story Hall”. I’d already had some familiarity with Medium, as a fellow Cowbirder who’d grown discontent with some of Cowbird’s features had invited me to Medium a few years earlier, and had helped me navigate my way around telling a story there. So, forgetting all about my beginnings at WordPress, I continued my habit of writing over on Medium, and have been writing there ever since.

I recently noticed a charge on a credit card for the renewal of my subscription to WordPress. What? “Oh, yeah”, I remembered. Instead of immediately cancelling that renewal, I decided to check it out. I liked what I saw. I might be ready to start out completely new here on WordPress. I even upgraded my subscription to Premium, whatever that means. I think it was just my way of saying, “Yes! I’m ready to do this.”

Why the sudden change? Well, I’ve realized what I was doing on Medium was trying to find something to replace Cowbird. Nothing could really do that, so a lot of my time there was kind of frustrating, even though it did provide a home for my writing for two years. It got much better once I started venturing out beyond The Story Hall to discover other writers on there, with no connection to Cowbird. But, I never really found a steady rhythm on Medium. It wasn’t just Medium, it was me, and life, and lots of other factors.

But that all was then, and this is now. I’m starting out fresh, here on WordPress, and I’m going to give this site a shot, to be where I do my primary writing and storytelling. It just feels right, and I’ve learned that sometimes, I have to trust the feeling.

“Only the beginning of what I want to feel forever”.