Project Grace 2010 was a sacred journey for me. My daily blogging practice had become an integral part of my day; an important ritual that had me feeling complete and worthy - something I had long strived for. My original plan was to end the project on November 3rd, my 40th birthday, however it seemed premature to conclude it then. Yesterday marked the end of 2010 and somehow, it felt sacrilegious to extend the project further. Therefore on this New Year's Day, 01/01/2011, I declared Project Grace 2010 complete.
What followed was a hollow emptiness. I felt the need to continue with my daily blogging by creating something that did not have a 'use by date'. Alas, Trailing Grace was born.
So where did Trailing Grace come from? I virtually hear you ask. Well, the seed was planted on September 30th when I was watching the 'Eat Pray Love' episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show (I loved the book and was interested in learning about the movie, especially as I was in Bali at the time of filming in 2009). Oprah was having a D&M (deep and meaningful conversation) with Julia Roberts and author Liz Gilbert that became particularly interesting when they talked about being true to yourself and finding your life's purpose (my perpetual quest).
Oprah came out with the words "we are all born into this world trailing grace" and my mouth dropped. It was one of those 'Twilight Zone' moments complete with the 'de de de de, de de de de' theme running in my head. I felt that the universe had sent a message that was meant for me and only me, much like the time I read the Celestine Prophesy. The words resonated, speaking to me like no other. It's that metaphorical jigsaw puzzle piece that one stumbles on whilst vacuuming on top of the pelmet boxes - so totally unexpected, so totally thrilling. "Thank you Oprah" I whispered in my mind and before the show had finished, I had compulsively registered the domain name trailinggrace.com.
Once registered, I questioned my sanity for I had no idea (or vision) of what it would become. All I knew is that I loved the name, it came from the mouth of one of my greatest inspirations (next to Gandhi) and it made me chuckle (I'm a dog in the Chinese horoscope and Trailing Grace was like an 'in' joke between me and the universe - let's just say it has something to do with me chasing my tail). For three months, I let the domain name just sit there completely untouched and without a clue about what I would do with it... that is, until today.
So... at this late hour, please excuse the emptiness of the website and the crudeness of the social media pages (
Blogger,
WordPress,
Xanga,
TumblR,
Twitter,
YouTube,
Vimeo,
MySpace,
Picassa,
FlickR,
Facebook, and
Posterous). As you can see, I have been busy - though some may argue that 'fanatical' is a more apt term. Whilst it may appear that I am positioning myself for world domination, I can assure you that it's only global propagation that I am interested in. Well, at this stage at least ;-)
Tomorrow I will commence the daunting task of weaving this all into one beautiful tapestry, which will somehow be the fabric of the official Trailing Grace website - how very exciting.
Until tomorrow, know that the sadness of an ending is consoled by the excitement of a new beginning - and not all impulsive purchases are bad.
Grace xx
PS. I could have interpreted the broad availability of 'Trailing Grace' to mean that it's a crap name. However I like to think that it really was a gift for me, and only me - sent by the universe and delivered by Oprah. I love a good story and that one suits me just fine.
