Oh, the people you’ll meet

Home, for Lori Rensink, will always be the farm she grew up on, where she spent her summers careree and barefoot. Fortunately, she never had to move during her childhood, so for all those years, turning onto that long, gravel driveway always meant one thing: she was almost home. But since the age of eighteen, this paralegal and possible future law school student has found herself moving twice a year. In fact, she says, she’s become quite the expert at packing and moving.

Not that that’s a bad thing—she’s just restless. And that restlessness has taken her far and wide. Whether she’s helping build houses in Mexico, attending a conference in Philadelphia, or just relaxing on a boat in Eufaula (Whofaula? It’s in Oklahoma), Lori obviously enjoys the company of the myriad people she meets along the way. And the time she spent working in a coffee shop fit her personality to a tee: from her vantage point behind the counter, she could take in the day-to-day happenings of her regular customers as their lives played out at the tables right in front of her.

It’s these and all the other people in her life that drive her to write, to share. And since the word “family,” to Lori, means the people we are born with just as much as it means friends who feel like family, everything she writes may as well be for her family.

Care to expand on that, Lori? She does. Read on.

Maybe you’re inspired by family. Or people. Or things. Enter the inspiration contest today and you could be featured here!

Photo credit: Lori Rensink

Lori’s two cents:

My inspiration comes from the people I meet and the conversations I have. Sometimes my inspiration comes from famous people who have done great things. They inspire me to be better and dream bigger. But mostly I find my inspiration comes from the people that no one else notices. I like to see things in people that others don’t and see people differently than others would.

People are also the driving force behind why I share my writing. The more people that read my work and tell me the ways they can relate and the ways it helps them, the more I feel the need to share my writing. Not just more writing in quantity, but the content as well. I want to share writing that is real and raw and honest and personal. You know, that stuff that most people just keep in their journals because they don’t want people to know how messy their lives are. I want to talk about those things in my life, to open the door for others to be able to talk to me about those things in their lives. Humans, after all, were created to need each other.

For some fun, insightful stories on growing up, adventures at summer camp, and the importance of family, head over to Lori’s blog, These Days, where you may notice that the tagline of her blog are the very words she lives by: “Life is an adventure. Live accordingly.”

Then come back and tell me what inspires your writing, and the next article may just be about you.