Today rounds out the first week of blogging every day.
This post also marks my 7th blog. Ever.
With 1 week down and 3 to go, this seems like a good moment to reflect on the past week and the 3 ahead.
So how’s it going?
It’s feel much like jumping in to a cold river or pool, or taking a cold shower.
Scary at first, uncomfortable for much of the time, flashing moments of euphoria or bursts of energy, and the ever elusive and delicious moment of being in “flow.”
Half of the past 6 posts have felt like a rushed shit show, just trying to check the box and follow thru on the commitment. The other few provided glimpses into what it’ll feel like when I don’t have to cram a finished post into every day, especially the very dense or busy days.
I feel as though I'm growing more comfortable with the discomfort of this commitment and the resulting implications. The hope is that this’ll be like training or running with a weighted vest. After the month is over, I can shed the vest, enjoy the gains, and draft the posts with a level of comfort and ease I can’t currently imagine. It’s perhaps a combination of optimism and faith that I’ll be able to more fully see and feel the gains of this month of stretching and training when I’m no longer in the gauntlet. I do believe it will be there.
TLO: trust, let go, be open.
Trust the process.
Let go of needing the process to go or look a certain way.
Be open to what I don’t know, and especially what I don’t know that I don’t know.
Bits of this daily blog commitment remind me of the poem-a-day for a year that I did about about a decade ago.
I can taste fleeting glimmers of my writing ‘voice’ and depth of mind coming through in some of the bits of writing in these posts.
I can feel a familiarity with showing up for the blank white page and attuning to what I authentically want to talk about in today’s writing.
I can feel the intense discomfort of an inner critic yearning (and sometimes screaming) to make these words, sentences, ideas, and visual formatting PERFECT.
I can feel the little moments of ‘flow’ where the writing process kinda’ takes over and becomes effortless.
I can feel the absence of flow, the excruciating opposite wherein every word or sentence just feels like trying to have a bowel movement while constipated.
(apologies for that intense analogy, but its quite accurate and effectively communicates the point)
I wrote recently about the power of making a daily commitment. I very much enjoyed that post. And right now I’m thinking more about the idea.
One thing to note is that in jumping into a daily commitment is its like the archetypal Heroes Journey. There’s idea about of what lies ahead, there’s an end goal, and there’s a ‘why’ for embarking on the journey.
The unknown, or Mystery, is a prominent element in a daily commitment. It’s a scary and empowering risk.
What’s going to happen?
How’s this going to work?
Will I be successful?
What will I gain from this?
What will I learn from this?
Who will I become, or who can I become, thru doing this?
What is possible? What’s possible for me in this commitment? What’s possible for me in my life?
Possibility. This is gift of the unknown or the Mystery.
There’s so much we don’t know, and even more that we don’t know that we don’t know.
Adventure is an Add-venture. We talk about ventures in business, but can talk the same way about ventures in life?
This is adventure is a venture, an investment with a risk of success and failure, an investment into a vision of new and better possibilities.
I’m not trying to overinflated this or make it seem grandiose, BUT this is microcosm of the macrocosm.
Such as the provocative statement that: how we do anything is how we do everything.
That can sound like nonsense but it also holds the wisdom of how the macro is in the micro.
Anything we do or embark upon has the potential for life changing impact.
I’m here for it.
For the unknowns, the mystery, and the risks of aspiration.
For the myriad possibilities in the micro moments, and the possibilities of macro impact.
I’m here for it. For this life. For this blog.
I’m here to fuck around and find out what’s possible.
A heliotropic headspace, always growing toward the light.