I set out to write a blog post a day in 2012. It’s December
12 and I’ve reached the grand total of 44 posts. That’s an average of 3.6 per
month. If I could look back on the me that started the challenge in January, I
would probably feel disappointed that I didn’t make my goal. But the me that’s
sitting in the now of falling short of my intention feels totally fine with my
shortcomings – if I should even consider them such.
I realize that it was important to have the goal to strive
toward. I did do more writing in the early part of the year, before I started
dating Marcus, before I started writing even more for hire, and before I
undertook more consulting projects.
I know that writing is an important exercise. Especially
writing for myself. Writing my stories. Writing my experiences. Writing my
truth. That’s something that writing for hire can’t do. When I work for someone
else, it’s in my words, my style, my ideas on structure and organization, but
it’s not the same as deciding this is 100% the most important thing to share
with the world. It’s not necessarily my optimism, my joy, and my hope (though I
do strive to find work projects that allow the good to shine through, because
we have far, far too much bad news in this world).
This morning I was at the gym reading a magazine, and I read
something about a woman who wrote ten books while working a full-time job. Ten.
She wrote these ten books by writing for just15 minutes each day. 15 minutes. Every
day. Her work. Her projects. Her books. She didn’t spend the whole day on it.
She didn’t have time. She spent what she could eek out. Perhaps it was the
first 15 minutes upon waking, or 15 minutes after a morning run, or 15 minutes
after dinner. But the accumulation of 15 minutes, daily is 91 hours and 25
minutes in a year.
Really her challenge was not much different than the one I
set out to tackle at the start of this year. A book, like a blog, is an
accumulation of words, thoughts, and ideas. A book is a bit more refined
because it’s organized in a cohesive manner, but a book and a blog are the same
beast. They’ve got the same bones.
