My first blog.  Pardon me if I seem a little nervous … but, you see, I’ve been  troubled by something lately and I’ve chosen it as the theme of this blog.

“Where’s my mojo?”

Maybe it’s something you’ve struggled with, maybe you have some advice or are just wondering if anyone else has the same problem.

I don’t know when or how it happened, but I seem to have lost my mojo.  You know, that thing that inspires, motivates, moves the spirit … that nebulous thing that runs through our life and gets us out of bed in the morning.  Not work, which is that thing (unless you’re too rich to work) that we have to get up and do … sometimes willingly, sometimes grudgingly, many times with the promise “the weekend is almost here!” No, I’m talking about motivation, interest, passion … that thing that moves us from the couch and the tv to go for a bike ride, a kayak trip, to work on a project of some kind.  It’s what drives us to invest in hobbies, and it’s where my mojo used to live.  Artists will refer to “it” as the muse – that spirt of creation that drives one to paint or draw or write or whatever medium one has chosen.

A short bit of back story:  I’m of a certain age where, if I were a man, the old “mid-life crisis” explanation might rear its stereotypical head.  I know this much, they’re not restricted to men.  Women have them too.  Maybe that’s what’s happened to me?  After years of going through the standard routine: college, first job, subsequent jobs, establishing a career – I find myself feeling one overwhelming and persistent thought:

Now what?

I’m still a decade plus away from retirement, so the work thing still demands attention – but at the end of the day, when I’ve come home … there’s that thought

Now what?

The hobbies of a lifetime are scattered around me like so many Christmas presents.  Played with obsessively, to the exclusion of all else, and now discarded and gathering dust.  The problem isn’t what to do, it’s why do it?