not a failure

Around two months ago, I shared my lofty aspirations to be part of the Do Over 100 days club, in which I would work on any one skill for 15 minutes a day over 100 days, amounting to 1500 minutes, or 25 hours of honing that skill.  If you've been checking in daily to see my latest post, you might be somewhat disappointed.  You see, I have neglected to continue this beyond the first few weeks.  I was very excited to try something different and out the gate I was all over it.  Then I took a day off.  Then another.  And eventually, we ended up at this point where it's been weeks since I last posted and weeks prior to that.

I'm not sure it really matters all that much to you, my loyal reader, seeing as blogging is so 2005, and here we are in two thousand fifteen.  But to me, this is somewhat disappointing.  My high hopes have come crashing down to reality.  I sometimes think that maybe I'm not a writer and why would I continue to write?  Maybe I'm meant to sit on the couch reading the same 7 news articles and transit/infrastructure message board posts over and over while Property Brothers is on in the background.  And so, at this point, some would admit that they are a failure and then resign themselves to couch potato land.

But I'm not a failure.  Sure, I'm the equivalent of two months behind on this writing challenge that I set for myself and then set up no accountability measures to ensure that I kept on going when the motivation to give it a try wasn't there.  Sure, some of my posts have been more strain than content as I tried to force myself to get out a few more words until the timer in my head dinged at 15:00.  Sure, there are about 4 people who read personal blogs by non-authors or screen personalities in the world [on a side note, check out Mayim Bialik's new website / blog Grok Nation for some fairly intellectual insight into her life as a child actress and now PhD holding Jewish actress.]  But is this for you, my loyal reader?  Or is this for me? 

I think when I first started, this blog was a way to get people to like me.  I was standing on the proverbial corner screaming - "Hey everybody!  Look at me!  I have thoughts!  And an emo-sounding blog title.  See?  I can do things too!", but over time realized that I don't need this for people to like me.  People will choose to like me or not like me for who I am, rather than what I do.

Since that realization, it has morphed into a way for me to process the world around me.  I tend to get confused in the internal swamp that is my brain, so the ability to export some of those strands of thought onto a written format helps me process life, the universe, and everything.

And so, despite having fallen well short of the goal of writing for 15 minutes every day, I still have not abandoned my home on the Internetz [despite having my Geocities home killed off years ago.  Oh geocities.com/heartland/2399, you will be missed.]  And I don't need to believe that I'm a failure.  Because I'm not.  I'm human and life sometimes can make your loftiest goals harder to reach.  But I will still keep reaching when I can.