FROM: The road less traveled is often the higher one
When your path diverges in the woods, what do you do? What do you do …?!
Has anyone suggested that you “let go” of something you love? It seems black and white from the outside. If it doesn’t serve you, let it go.
But as Robert Frost famously said, it sometimes isn’t that easy.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both …
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair…
What strikes me about Frost’s poem is how easily he makes a potentially life-altering decision. For all the pontificating he goes on to do, he’s already made his choice. He took the other one, which was “as just as fair.”
Frost wrote that famous poem to tease Edward Thomas, an indecisive friend who started writing poetry at Frost’s urging.
It still does not explain how Frost knew what he wanted at the crossroad. Is this man somehow magically in touch with his Wise Mind? How did he get so wise anyway?
Hint:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Perhaps, all it takes is a little urging from a well-intentioned friend to change the course of our entire life. Perhaps, it just requires a walk in the woods and a different path. Perhaps, it just takes a ripple…
Some of us like big splashes. I’m usually doing an awkward arms-flailing leap into the deep end. Last week, I ended a three-year relationship with North Dakota’s largest newspaper, The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, and dove in head first into my own space just on the edge of downtown Fargo (see pink arrow below)!!
I am thrilled to announce a partnership with Garden Communications Co., helmed by my brilliant friend and fellow writer Lonna Whiting. Much more to come on our partnership, but we are building “a newsroom for nonprofits” to support community journalism with candid photography and ethical storytelling.
When I first walked into The Commons, I knew I had found a place of community and intentional people building a better world around them. The co-working space is founded and managed by Max Kringen, and his business Tellwell Story Co. is connected to the Commons.Subscribe
In these partnerships, I have found that magic spark again to launch Pen & Paige in the Midwest (can you believe my website still says I’m in Montana?!).
This will also be the new home for Young Poets in North Dakota, and I plan to continue to fundraise and expand the program in the Fargo-Moorhead area.
Every dollar spent on this platform will go directly to supporting ethical storytelling, empowering young people to express themselves through the arts, and to build a new way of doing things in this digital mess we find ourselves in … As the last of the analogs, born in the 1980s, I am finding ways to disconnect and return to a simpler analog way of life without sacrificing knowledge and community building.
It’s never easy to start over. This time, I had a fantastic net of resources to catch me. I also knew in my telltale heart that I did not belong in traditional media. I knew I needed to break out of that mode of ambulance chasing and trauma bait to drive subscriptions. I needed to apply my own ethics to storytelling and not be worried that my voice is too loud or too strong.
