100, With a Whisper, Not a Shout

Well, here it is: my 100th post. I sort of expected it to seem more monumental than it does, but then again I am the kind of person who is always a little bit disappointed by my birthday as I am falling asleep that night. Not a good quality; I'm trying to change it, honest. If one's expectations are uniformly unmeetably high, one is bound to exist in a state of constant disappointment. Which is a graceless way to live. Not that I think all of my expectations are too high, or that I am always disappointed, but still. I can veer in this direction at the slightest hint of a breeze, and I'd like to be better able to dig in my heels and stand straight when it happens.

So 100 posts. What does this mean? I will be honest again: when I started this, 100 days ago, I know that somewhere in the back of my mind I did not think I'd keep going. Why? Because I am very good at short bursts of enthusiasm, grand scale projects in the moment, doing just about anything--really-under massive amounts of pressure and in a state of adrenaline-fueled anxiety. What I am not good at? Sustained, careful, thoughtful, mindful commitment, real concentration, anything that requires a long term investment, especially of time.

I'd better explain that because it didn't seem quite right as I was writing it, and I guess I mean in the arena of work. When it comes to writing, in my adult life, anyway, I have perfected the art of being a dilettante. I have often scoffed at the idea, internally, that writing is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, or whatever that saying is. It's talent, I would always say in my head. Talent and voice, sometimes a sort of mystical process in which the words appear on the page almost without the involvement of your conscious mind.

But another little voice would always nag: No, no. Without that you have nothing, it's true, but without the work, the talent is irrelevant. And you just don't want to do the real work.

Well guess what? It turns out that I do. And I can. And day by day, or should I say night by night, I am chipping away at that misconception. I am going back to ideas I generate here and working them out off the blog. I am allowing myself the time and space to develop articles and stories that have had or will have practical applications in my professional life. I am, in spots, figuring out what I want my next book to be, or my next two or three or four books, because I know I want to write them, and I know that I can.

I've said this before but I am a sort of life agnostic. I don't like to sign onto things, to be pigeonholed in any way, shape or form. I have always prided myself on being an iconoclast, someone who doesn't need to exist within the confines of other people's straight and narrow rules and ideas about how people should be. What arrogance! What naivete!

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned about writing, about myself, in setting--and meeting--this challenge is this: It's about the work. About deciding to wholly, passionately and persistently pursue what you love or rather want or even need to do because there is no other way to do it right.

And I know that spending an hour here or there writing this blog does not demonstrate this kind of commitment. But it demonstrates a step outside the path of the breeze, a commitment, if you will: to myself, my adult and independent and non wife and mother self, which is important, and to my work, which I care about so much on some level it has been easier not to face it, to pretend it didn't matter.

It does. I do. And this does too.

Looking forward to 101. Let's make a deal. For 200: I'll do a shout and not a whisper. But tonight, a whisper feels right. A humbled yet satisfied whisper in the cool spring night.