Willa's Journal: A Box of Stars

By Willa Cline

A collection of essays originally published in Willa Cline's online journal from 1995-1998.

Willa Cline lives in Overland Park, Kansas, with her husband Bob and cat, Dinah. She works as a producer for an interactive production company in Kansas City, Missouri, and dreams of living in a little yellow house on the beach. Read more about Willa at willa.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willa Cline
• Release date: Apr 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476056692

Willa Cline

Willa Cline lives in Overland Park, Kansas, with her husband Bob and cat, Dinah. She works as a producer for an interactive production company in Kansas City, Missouri, and dreams of living in a little yellow house on the beach. Read more about Willa at willa.com.

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Willa's Journal:

A Box of Stars

by Willa Cline

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright © 2005-2012 by Willa Cline. All rights reserved.

Dedication

For Bob, as always.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Blessings – August 1995

Because I Can! – October 1995

Action and Reaction – November 1995

Please write soon . . . – December 1995

New Beginnings – January 1996

Be Here Now – February 1996

A Box of Stars – March 1996

That’s Just the Way I Am – April 1996

Awake and Aware – May 1996

Forgiveness – June 1996

Having Adventures – July 1996

Just Listen – August 1996

Light and Darkness – September 1996

Love and Solitude – October 1996

The Heart of Compassion – November 1996

Ritual and Celebration – December 1996

Open Your Eyes – January 1997

A Hand Freely Given – February 1997

Allow Yourself to be Vulnerable – March 1997

Finding Happiness – April 1997

Release Your Expectations – May 1997

To Walk on the Earth – June 1997

The Value of Silence- July 1997

Finding Joy – August 1997

Writing With Purpose – September 1997

I Dare You – October 1997

Learning Acceptance – November 1997

Giving . . . and Receiving – December 1997

Transformation – January 1998

Listen With Your Heart – February 1998

Keeping Secrets –April 1998

Simply to Notice – May 1998

Summer Vacation – July 1998

About the Author

Introduction

When I first started my online journal in 1995, I wrote a special piece on the first of every month. I did that for three or four years, then stopped. But I remembered some of them fondly, and thought it would be a nice idea to collect them all in one place. I had planned on rewriting them--I thought I would edit them and update them a little, but as I read over them, I realized that many of them only make sense in the context of the time they were written, both because of what was going on in my life at the time, and what was going on in the world. Pop culture references, especially, may seem outdated, but for the most part I left them the way they were originally written.

* * * *

Blessings

I noticed a few things lately that made me re-think some things that I take for granted.

A woman whose style I greatly admire told me that we must have been twins in another lifetime because our styles are so similar. That really made my day.

One day last week I went out to lunch and there was a young woman in a stalled car about half a block from a major intersection. Three guys in hardhats who had stopped for lunch ran out into traffic and, after waiting for the traffic light to change, pushed her car through the intersection, into a parking lot, and backed it into a parking space. Then they returned to their lunch, waving off her thanks.

The other day on my way to work I passed a young Indian boy of about eight years dancing alone on the sidewalk to some inner music as he waited for the school bus. On other days I have seen this boy having an imaginary sword fight or practicing karate kicks as he waits for the bus. His imaginary life must be very rich. I hope he's able to retain that spark as he grows up.

On my way to lunch one day there was a young man skating down the sidewalk on inline skates carrying a hockey stick. He moved so gracefully he could have been flying.

There is a cafeteria at my office. I don't eat there; I don't like their food. I was walking past the cafeteria when some medical-type people who were there for a blood drive were going in to have lunch. One of them exclaimed, "This place is awesome!" I guess we don't always appreciate the things we have.

Willa's Journal - August 1995

* * * *

Because I Can!

Web publishing is difficult to explain to someone who's never seen it. It's almost impossible to describe when you're starting from a zero knowledge base. But surprisingly, I've discovered that it's even more difficult to explain to someone why I'm doing it at all. Obviously, for-profit companies who put up Web pages are doing it to make money. That's understandable. Organizations put up Web sites to publicize their causes. That's also understandable. So why am I doing it? Because I can.

The Web grabbed my imagination from the first time I saw it. In the beginning, I didn't realize that publishing on the Web was something that anyone could do with a little work. I assumed that you had to know some arcane programming language or own an expensive piece of software or hardware to produce these works of art.

When I found out that anyone who was willing to put in a little work learning a fairly simple language

could put up a web site, I couldn't contain my excitement. The idea that anyone in the world could publicize anything they wanted and anyone else could look at it just staggered me. Think of the possibilities!

Learning HTML was probably