Holidays

Check Points, Milestones, and Pauses

Holidays are the pauses in life we depend on. They offer punctuation marks in our books of life. Last Monday in the United States, we celebrated Memorial Day – a day honoring military personnel who have passed away while in service. My paternal grandfather passed away while serving. I never met him but I imagine a way that I could honor his memory is by living my life fully. A well-lived life is a legacy I’m sure he had sought to protect.

Since last Monday, I’ve been thinking about the projects I had been passionate about initiating but did not put enough energy toward sustainment. The ideas that have lived in my head as dreams have yet to be molded into clay so that they can truly take form in this physical plane. This project – Her Lab Journal was at the very top of my list.

I built up an inventory of posts – most of which are pieces of a longer-form essay on this topic or that. Yet, I didn’t post. Why? I have several hypotheses but the leading factors can be linked to fear and energy. Given the environmental factors at play (working full-time, navigating adulthood, and facing overwhelm that is the global economy in 2022), I like I’m sure you have fallen into a worry spiral as to where to best place my energy and focus. I’ve allowed fears to creep up and cynicism to dwell for too long. 

Holidays like the start of a new school year can mark a time to reflect on how far a young student has come and will continue to go in their academic career. National holidays like Thanksgiving can be distinct periods of celebration and personal holidays like birthdays can be appreciated as a milestone in one’s development. All too often adults after finishing school and entering the workforce look to holidays for creating pauses in their life. They can easily become the punctuation marks of the very long run-on sentences that create our day-to-day lives. Tom Bilyeu from Impact Theory introduced the concept to me over a year ago, and here I am using the recent holiday as a crutch to reset a project. I’m thankful for the reminder, the time to assess where I’ve placed my attention, and redirect it to where I actually want to generate momentum. One of my goals this year is to expand – expand my view of myself, expand my observational skills, and expand how I engage in the world so that I can become a better storyteller. I have a hunch that wanting everything to be perfect and fear of rejection (for imperfection) has led to a self-imposed blockade and as a result, I’ve allowed myself to let this blog slide and let “life” take over. Greg McKeown in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less argues that  “the way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default.” If my agenda is to expand & experiment and perfectionism is a direct opponent, then writing is an effective short-term counter-attack to perfectionism and ally to personal growth.

Putting it to the Test

Let’s put it to the test by running an experiment

• Over the next 25 days, I will write a blog post about any observation or question that comes to mind.
• There will be little to no editing so that I focus on the main objective – to write as a means to capture curiosities and promote expanded thinking
• If there is a time when I struggle to write, I will still post something to keep up the momentum.
• I will take a happiness assessment today and a happiness assessment on my last day and compare the results.
  • I’m not sure if there’s a clinical way to test out having a growth mindset so I’m defering to a resource I’m already aware of for establishing a baseline to compare
  • The link to my final results will be added to this post at the end.

Let’s see how it goes!