#100

This is my 100^th post.  This is the imaginary finish line that I laid for myself several months ago.  Moving into 2016 I do not plan on continuing to post regularly on the movement.  Maybe this flies in the face of everything that I am about to lay out, but I feel like I have met a challenge, “had an experience”, and am ready to remove posting on this blog from my weekly to-do list.  When I look into my crystal ball: 2016 will entail finishing my last season with NUT, studying for the CPA exam, trying to move to Minneapolis, and writing things unrelated to ultimate.

Crossing the 100 posts threshold feels good; it feels like I have accomplished something, I feel like this is a big deal, and as I plan on putting this blog on ice I want to talk about how great I am.  I started this blog for a few reasons:

·         I am a bad writer and I want to be a good writer.

·         I talk to myself, a lot.  Talking to myself tends to diverge into me arguing with myself.

·         I believe in things strongly, but when challenged by someone externally I am often extremely disappointed in how flimsy my reasoning is or how little of the big picture I have considered.

With a blog I could practice writing, get my arguments down on paper, and really flesh out some of thoughts that I had. 

Looking through the history of this blog it is apparent that it took some time to get into a groove.  I started the blog in March of 2012, the first post was made in March of 2013.  I managed to put up 11 posts in 2013 and 5 in 2014.  How many blogs exist where the author writes a post on day 1 of year 1 and says, “Hey so pumped to start this blog check back for all my great thoughts” and then the next post is on day 12 of year 2 and it says “LOL totally forgot about this blog, I’ll be posting more soon LOL” and then they never post again?  Tons, there are tons of those blogs in the world and mine had become one of them.

I would write a paragraph, reread it, decide it didn’t make any sense and then I’d delete it.  I would write an entire blog post, decide I didn’t have the guts to post it and then delete it.  Then I listened to a podcast with Bill Simmons and Katie Nolan, in their discussion Katie talks about how difficult it is to get a sports journalism career started.  Her strategy was to post on her blog twice a day every day, she didn’t have a job but she was going to write something, write anything, and post it as if it were her job.  This resonated with me.  The theory of adding an inch, of doing something regularly, of just focusing and banging it out were things I already believed in.  What really grabbed my attention was Katie’s perception of her own writing, they aren’t all perfect, not every article is a masterpiece, and she doesn’t even like some of the articles that she has written.  She hit the publish button because she convinced herself that she had to. 

I decided to run with this idea.  I would set writing goals – write x posts this week – and I would hold to them as if I was getting paid.  The result is here.  Some of these posts I don’t even agree with, grammar errors are everywhere, and contradictions can be found in articles that were written a week apart.  There are many times when I was really grasping for straws just trying to say something so I could meet the deadline.  However, I am happy that I kept hitting the “publish” button.  It is funny to me that the posts I think are great, no one ever talks to me about, but the posts I think are weak everyone wants to talk about.  Zubair told this happens because when I write well I cover the bases and there is nothing more to say, but when I write poorly there is space to debate and gaps to be filled in with discussion - obvious with the value of hindsight.

Der Berggeist:

This is the image associated with the blog.  This is called “Der Berggeist”.   Before setting off on the return journey to England, JRR Tolkien bought some picture postcards. Among them was a reproduction of Der Berggeist.  Tolkien preserved this postcard carefully, and long afterwards he wrote on the paper cover in which he kept it: 'Origin of Gandalf'."  When you click on the image it links you to Gandalf battling the Balrog.

Just as the image inspired Tolkien, I wanted the blog to inspire me to battle the shadows of my thoughts and challenge the fires of my beliefs.

The Movement:

We need momentum to be motivated, through motivation we build momentum which further feeds our motivation.  This positive feedback cycle of “mo” can carry you far, but what do you do when you have no “mo”?  How do you enter the cycle when you are devoid of motivation and momentum?  Well, you need to start a movement.