This little 90-in-90 meme has spread to places I never quite expected.
Hardy a week goes by without someone emailing me, Tweeting me, stopping me in real life (e gads) or talking with me about some 90-in-90 challenge they’ve undertaken. I love hearing about what people are doing. (Aside: if you’re working on a challenge, let me know about it and I’ll create a master list of some kind where everyone can follow.)
And I’ve undertaken The Year of Friends, The Year of Health as part of the Brad@40 game plan. But all of these are just daily reminders that we change our lives in the very small, incremental ways we live our life.
Too many people – me included – sit around and await the Big Change. The moment when all of our sins and mistakes are washed away in a grand gesture of our life. But that’s not how life works. We are, in the end, the sum total of all the little decisions and compromises and procrastinations that pile up in our life. Not to paraphrase Annie, but our Big Change becomes always just a day away. Never quite here, but never quite un-see-able.
So I’m starting a new challenge for myself: every day, I am going to do something that I’ve never done before. I have no idea how I am going to pull this off or what shape this is going to take. And truthfully, I’m not overly worried.
Because the intent is what matters. Not the outcome. Life is a process. One that I’ve started failing.
Those who know me will find this hard to believe, but I’m an introvert. Given my choice, I would have a job where I never had to leave the house. Where my contact with people was limited. Where I rarely had to speak aloud.
I could – and have – exist isolated from people. That is my natural state of being.
If addiction recovery has taught me anything, though, it’s that my natural state of being is not one I should encourage.
It’s time to get busy living, or get busy dying. I know this. I’ve committed to this. Now it’s time to move to action.
There’s so many reasons for doing this, but there are a few that just keep bouncing around in my head:
- I feel a bit of the old me coming back, and I’m not sure how to deal with that. For the first year, I was so broken that I had little sense of myself. The second year, my life solidified as I made my way through some of the amends and daily maintenance. The third year, though, life has returned to normal and I need to remind myself that while I feel better, I am not better.
- Everyone – everyone – should step outside their comfort zones as much possible. There is much to learn there. (I hope.)
- The great part of life is failing. It means you’ve done something. You’ve tried. You’ve stretched. I don’t fail nearly enough anymore.
- Failure reminds me to be humble. I forget this lesson way more than I’m comfortable admitting. Although I guess I just did.
- Love and happiness and joy and all of the really good emotions in life come from shocking the system.
- Ditto for the bad things.
- An inspired life is one that listens and learns from the things around.
- Because I don’t like being the person who is afraid – petrified – of doing new things. But I am. Whatever “face” you see me put on when I’m trying something new, understand it’s a complete act.
- Act long enough and it becomes true.
- The world is pretty god danged cool. (You’re welcome mom for the language check there. Also: happy birthday!)
As part of this challenge, I’m going add a bit of incentive as well. For the next 3 months, I’ll only be writing and Tweeting about these things from @Brad_King. (Obviously the book and teaching accounts will continue, but those are mostly boring.) I’ll answer questions or respond to people, but my conversations here and on Twitter will be exclusively about Something New (#SoNew).
Along the way, I’ll try to capture images from my adventures and post updates here each day. Don’t get freaked out if I don’t. This isn’t the blog challenge. Everything will get here eventually.
But…eventually.
As it turns out, this challenge will end the day I run this marathon in Bloomington. In other words: like life, I have the beginning and the end. What happens in between is still to be determined.
Buy the ticket. Take the ride.
Aloha means goodbye.
