Finding Me

I have been searching for a while to try to discover who the "real" me is. Reading blogs, searching tutorials and crafts for ideas to springboard from, not really happy with feeling like a copycat in what I am doing and how I am living. What do I love?
I have given myself permission to ignore and forget everything that I see that does not relate to me. Much like the time I quit getting Martha Stewart magazine. I am not/ nor do I want to be the same as anyone else. My life does not need to be a Pottery Barn catalog to be happy and fulfilling.
I appreciate the graciousness and beauty I see in the lives of others around me. I want to gather the best of life and surround myself with it. Not to clutter my "in-box" or "to do" list, but to fill the great need inside me to create and live purposely. Life, strangely, is not easy. And living a gracious and full life is even harder. It does not come freely and without effort (dang- it). As the school year begins, I am taking the opportunity to refine my own life. What lessons do I need/ want to learn?
As my favorite season- autumn- approaches- I look forward to taking the natural instinct to prepare for winter- to greater heights. I want to gather in my store of beauty, to root out the negative and unproductive thoughts, to harvest goodness all around me and preserve it for days when the bleak and grey storms of life are pounding on the front door. To clear the ground and then let it rest, ready for the proper season to fill it again with "good seeds".
Mostly I want to be ME. The eternal, pure, unpolluted by the world me. The me God sees. The ME I am meant to be, the ME I have the potential to become. How my soul yearns to be THIS me.