Blogging is something I am meant to be doing. Frequently, that little lightbulb goes off in my head that says "this would make a great blog post topic!" and though I want to blog, and sometimes even intend to write that post when I get home, I nearly always have shoved the idea away, consciously, and have been avoiding this blog at all costs.
I haven't been sure why until just recently.
A little backstory here to catch you up on my life at the moment: I'm currently on a working vacation in Hawaii. Vacation, because it's been four years since I've taken a real holiday. Hawaii, because I have never been to a tropical beach location and have been dreaming about it for ages, and it fits the bill for the type of activities that jive nicely with a work retreat. And why am I working on vacation, most of all? Because I needed to work on my business rather than in it. To do that, I needed to get away from work and away from all my regular life distractions, so I can strategize... and if I'm going away physically, I'm killing two birds with one stone and taking a holiday!
I needed to do business strategizing because I've been unhappy with the process and results of two specific parts of my business, and I needed to find a way to make them work for me instead of feeling like I'm fighting against them all the time.
It's become clear to me while working on this strategy that:
- I had resigned myself to mediocrity in my career due to my lack of solutions to these business processes that weren't working.
- I'm not actually okay with mediocrity, however.
- There are still avenues I haven't exhausted for new processes in the areas of my business I've been unhappy about, so I have no business throwing in the towel and pretending they're unfixable. And, interestingly:
- While my primary focus with this strategic planning session on my day job, I've been hearing this clear voice that keeps telling me that blogging needs to be a regular part of my life. It doesn't need to be part of my job strategy, but it needs to be a part of my life strategy.
WRONG. So, so, so wrong. Not participating in your passion = GIANT FUCKING FAIL.
Another thing I do that is pretty dumb, when I have the presence of mind to actually think about it? Believing that past results determine future results. It's a sign that I'm a bit jaded and have been bashed about by life a little bit, but that doesn't make it true. It doesn't matter how many times I have failed or will continue to fail at things in the future, or how many times I don't live up to my own hopes. That doesn't mean I should lower the bar, and it doesn't mean I can't ever succeed at anything, though I'd say it's pretty likely that I won't if I stop trying.
In the words of Thomas Edison,
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."