The most important blog post. It is on the most important blog. Yours. Even if no one but you reads it. The blog you write each day is the blog you need the most. It’s a compass and a mirror, a chance to put a stake in the ground and refine your thoughts. And the most important post? The one you’ll write tomorrow.*
(Seth Godin)

The ego is you as you think of yourself. You in relation to all he commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you’ve never even thought of. And you’re stuck with your past when you are stuck with your ego.**
(Joseph Campbell)

Maria Mitchell received a medal from the King of Denmark for her discovery of a new comet, a moment that made her invisible pursuit visible to others. She had stepped outside the norms of her society to pursue her love of astronomy, becoming the first woman to be admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She reflected, though:

Medals are small things in the light of the stars […]. There’s only one thing in the world of any real importance, and that is goodness.^

Her particular pursuit of goodness saw Mitchell at the forefront of the campaign against slavery and the campaign for female education. Although it is unlikely she would describe it so, it was a journey from ego into the self and the opening of a better future.

This is a journey we all find ourselves upon, especially noticeable to us when we come to the end of one year and the beginning of another.

My particular pursuit is for people to discover what they have within them for making a difference, for themselves and for those around them. With this in mind, Seth Godin’s words were timely for me as today I complete my seventh year of blogging and doodling every day. I wonder about the eighth, about what will happen as I continue to aim my words and doodles at myself first of all, these pushing me to where I need to be heading, but also offering them to you, waiting to see what you will do next.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: The most important blog post.)
(**From Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.)
(^Maria Mitchell, quoted in Maria Popova’s Figuring.)