At the beginning of October I had these high hopes of sitting down at my computer everyday & eloquent words pouring forth. I had the expectation of embracing the little moments in life & sharing them with the vast reach of the interwebs.Clearly that didn't happen.
My first reaction when I missed a day of blogging was "Oh shoot, I need to schedule it into my calendar so that I don't forget." My second was "Oh crap this blogging everyday this is REALLY hard."
Then I missed three days. And four. And so on...
Until I get to October 31st and there were 8 entries on my blog for the 31 Day Challenge. EIGHT.
TOTAL BLOGGING FAIL.
I know that expressing feelings of failure for blogging 8 out of 31 days will cause some people to laugh & think me silly. But I truly saw this as something I failed at. And truthfully, I'm not entirely sure why the feeling of failure hit me so hard. But it's did and it sucked. Feeling like a failure is never pleasant. It often brings about feelings of shame, disappointment, inadequacy, feeling less than, etc.
I allowed myself to wallow in that stench of failure for about 10 seconds (seriously, that's it) before I began to see the 31 Days challenge in a new light. I began to look back over my blog and I noticed something quite significant...
I hadn't blogged since the end of July. 2 months of silence.
I knew I was going through a blogging dry spell & I really didn't care. August & September were CRAZY months & so blogging took the back-burner. I'm sure there were things I could have written about and if I had made the time, I probably would have pumped out something worth reading... but it just didn't happen. I expect every writer goes through a dry spell now & then, and in the year 2012, this was mine.
Suddenly the feelings of failure dissipated and were replaced by feelings of accomplishment & joy.
"8 days of consistent blogging when the last 2 months have been completely silent?!?! WOOHOOO! GO ME!"
Isn't it strange how something as simple as NOT writing can make me feel so inadequate, so down? Sometimes I really don't understand it. But this so-called failed experiment made me realize that insecurities are always with us and when we get our hopes up there's always the possibility that we'll be disappointed. But as with everything else the joy is in the journey. It's OK if things don't turn out exactly as planned. And it's OK if you don't always meet the goals you set out for yourself. The important part is you tried. You put yourself out there.
That's brave. And there's no failure in bravery. EVER.
