This week has been one of the busiest weeks of my time developing Shhhh! Digital Media over its history, though you wouldn’t guess it just by looking at the recent post activity, as most of the posts I’ve been working on are back dated. Clearly indicated by another clue in the featured image of this post.
However, the post that I’m most proud of this week is certainly the updated and revised edition of The Butterfly Dragon: Thr33 for Women.
I didn’t accomplish as much as I’d hoped in terms of new writing, especially on the two most recent stories in the works: The Butterfly Dragon Reimagined Episode 14: The Trail Leads South, and Grand Tapestry of Moments Episode 4: Moving On.
Both stories are situated to continue, though I’ve been very focused on getting the original content over to this new web site in the background, as it has always been part of the foundation, and doing so often keeps me in touch with who and where I was back when I wrote that content.
Reading something you wrote over a decade ago can sometimes be an awakening experience. It brings back many memories and emotions, and in particular, a sense of direction. Rekindling that sense of innocence I’d always intended for the two flagship storylines of my Shhhh! Digital universe. Innocence in the sense of being centered and comfortable within one’s own ways and conduct, just as much so as it implies a decided lack of experience with regard to the unfamiliar ways of the world.
Seeing as I’ve chosen to adhere to advocacy for a number of causes, which are each included in every story post that currently exists here, including those that will eventually exist here, innocence can also mean a sort of neutrality along the lines of ideas that are often associated with that which is secular, a word often misunderstood by many. It does not mean the relinquishing of one’s own beliefs as much so at it means focusing on carefully navigating aspects that lead to conflict between beliefs, philosophy and ideology, in the name of overcoming hurdles that often divide people.
We’re always going to be divided in one way or another when it comes down to the encroachment of our values, those we see being necessary for the world, right down to our own personal values. The point is to progress as a society despite these differences, and contend with the actual issues rather than the dogma to which we purport to subscribe.
However, those ideas also help us to form bonds with people who share as much the same, and when and where we let people into our lives at the personal level, all the way up to the societal level. We all think differently. We eat differently. We behave differently. We have different ideas about what’s right and wrong. The real strength of any society is their ability to overcome those differences to achieve progress on the basis of a common good for the whole of society by meeting somewhere in the middle.
When we do, we’re catering to an idea that doesn’t sacrifice our integrity or our individual identity. Those things that we keep close and between those who are close with us are not lost, but we’ve somehow managed to preserve those same cherished aspects of our lives, and the lives of those with whom we come to such societal consensus as people. After all, they have those aspects too. Would you try to rob them of their biases by making it seem that they have an extreme of either love or hate for aspects related to you and your person? As if by being more extreme in either admiration or animosity when compared with how they feel about someone close to them, you’ve won their bias even more so over those they claim to care about.
Being a fair and just person all around entails helping others to protect those most cherished aspects of their life in terms of their biases, while at the same time, protecting your own. Only a complete monster or fool would try to break those aspects of the lives of others, and we are the farthest from such self reproach when we meet in the middle and progress society for the greater common good, while protecting those aspects of ourselves that make us individual and unique. If we weren’t, then what value would any feeling towards another have? I’d prefer to stay away from the kind of people who read my writing, and assume that I’m not an individual, but a carbon copy or a meat stick possessed by the disembodied persona of another member of their ideology. I believe that people of that ilk are incapable of caring for anyone else but themselves. That is generally the front door to being welcome in my personal life, and there is nobody beyond that door who doesn’t at least feel that there’s individuality and uniqueness possible in every single person.
Think freely, but speak and act responsibly.
The backdated content I’ve been posting most recently deals almost directly with those ideas and such a conflict that arises, where groups are ultimately divided along the lines of their ideas about individuality and uniqueness. If you can’t see that, then you can’t truly care for anyone. The women from my own life who inspired much of what I write are certainly a testament to those ideas, though they’ve never expressed them directly, but they live it, and they’re certainly unique themselves. I look at my cat, and am flabberghasted at how uniquely different a persona he has from other cats I’ve known over my life, who too had their own as well.
I’d much rather live in a universe full of such uniqueness, rather than living in a universe full of copies of myself. Mirrors, in a holistic sense aren’t truly for looking at one’s own self. You might use them to clean up your appearance before venturing out into society, but that truly isn’t their holistic purpose.
Their purpose is for those times when you suspect that you’re not the only one looking out through your own eyes, that those who might be, are revealed as your body not being theirs, but to being yourself and your own body. From the moment you peer into the mirror, they can’t lay claim to the credit for your insight and introspective into the nature of being or anything else you’ve done, or how truly you care for those you let in past your personal front door. They’re instantly revealed as stowaways in someone else’s life.
Alright, I’d better lighten up here.
I truly do hope that you’ve been enjoying what you’re seeing and experiencing here at the new Shhhh! Digital Media, however do remember that its still just as much the original Shhhh! Digital Media, and the one that came before that. All of the content from the original site will eventually end up here and that process is well under way, and with a lot of new content added and as well, some rewrites and additions to the classic legacy stories that tie it all together with the new Shhhh! Digital Media.
I’ll probably be taking it easy this weekend, but I’ll have some brand new content up next week, as well I’ll post one more chapter on Saturday August 22 from the year 1654, where a certain fiery red haired goth is about to take on the fight for her life and the freedom of the colony of West View (in Shhhh! Digital Media canon).
Thank you as always for reading my content.
