Decisions, Decisions

Since it was way too cold for any of us to go to school today, I used the morning to do some journal writing.  In theory my 500 words were done by 9am, but those words to lead me to these that I can actually publish. 

In the TED talk with the Susan Cain, the author of Quiet, she described her experience of being on the speaking circuit to promote her book as the Year of Speaking Dangerously.  This morning I was thinking this is the Year of Writing Dangerously & Prolifically for me. 

Writing a lot is dangerous because sooner or later I'm going to write something that will rock my world or yours, and then we might just have to act on it.  Writing both prolifically and dangerously means I feel the fear and write it anyway.

When I used to teach journal writing classes I'd always tell students who were afraid to write too much or go too deeply to trust themselves.  We all have a built in protection mechanism or what I call the denial defense. We just won't go there if we're not ready.  As it turns out, we're usually more ready than we're willing to admit.

Take this morning, for instance.  I was all ready to rant about hurt feelings and suddenly I realized how I was (and usually am) as much to blame as anyone else.  As you know, I have a very vivid imagination and although this usually works in my favor, it can also lead to my undoing.  I started to think about how lucky I was to even be in the situation to begin with, let alone expect things to unfold exactly as I planned.

I used to have a friend who, whenever I tended to be perplexed, would say, "It's a good problem to have."  I can't say this reminder really helped at the time because even though it might have been a good problem to have or a decision between two equally good choices as opposed to a very difficult one between lesser evils, quick and decisive choices are not my strong suit.  I tend to think there is a right choice.  I'm convinced it is the opposite of whichever one I eventually make.

But lately I've decided there is just too much beyond my control to constantly judge the rightness of any given decision.  The best decision I can make is the one I can most easily execute in good faith given the available information without waffling or creating a lot of drama.  I made at least three not so great decisions last week and got to apologize for or deal with the consequences of them.  I made a few outstanding ones as well.

The best one I've made so far this year is to write 500 words a day for 31 days.  I had no idea how many other daily decisions that one decision would impact but it's set the standard for the rest of the year.  I've yet to decide how I'll proceed after Friday - Day 31! - because there many things I need to learn about blogging that I don't have a lot of time to learn while creating content every spare moment.  I thought I'd ask you since some decisions are best left to the tribe.

How often would you like to read this blog?  Daily is doable if the content is more like 100 words or less.  Three times a week is an option as well as just weekdays or weekends or any combination thereof.  Decisions, decisions.

In this case, my friend was right.  It's a good decision to get to make.  Weigh in with your thoughts below.