T-Minus 100
265/365 | Uncovering the heart of my year-long journey with communication and storytelling.
Today’s day 265 of this year-long challenge.
Which means, there are only 100 left.
That’s just over three months.
Crazy.
Writing a story each day for this column has, so far, shown me plenty that I didn’t expect but, more than anything, finally revealed one thing I was hoping it would.
A reader wrote me a while back to ask what I was going to do next; after the year wrapped up. Mainly, they wanted to know, would I keep the column going?
At the time, I responded with a genuine “I’m not sure.”
Then, this week, Isobel and I biked down to the lake to have dinner and watch the sun set, and we got to talking about the same thing. We were sitting on this rock wall by the shore, looking out across the water at the sun while it descended into the mountains on the other side. The crescent moon, already hanging dimly above it, grew brighter by the minute.
As I thought about my journey to this point, I realized I already reached my goals.
Originally, I hoped to accomplish two things at once: learn to communicate my thoughts and feelings in ways that made them more accessible to others, and write a book. In some ways those two goals have nothing to do with one another, and yet, they sort of have everything to do with each other. Making the time to write every day, in service of the first goal, is what made the second achievable.
And I did it.
Both.
It feels like everything from here on out is just bonus.
I’m watching the alpenglow bloom and light up the lake with purples and oranges and feeling... proud. Truly, I’m exhausted. But that’s from a broader combination of things like the job market, the economy, and a whole lot else. This, though, this realization of reaching my goals, feels like a huge win. And even though I know it’s come at a cost. Making it this far has meant saying “no” to lots of stuff. It’s required a seemingly constant game of reworking my schedule to find time for writing. And, I’m so grateful for all it’s given me. I feel more confident in my ability to share myself openly with others.
Isobel and I are biking home now, and I'm wondering if there's any one thing that's emerged during this process that's helped me get here. And I'm reminded of what I focused on when working on my story for Stories From The Stage: "The story isn't about what happened; it's about why it happened like that," and I'm growing more and more certain that this single principle is at the heart of my entire journey.
So far, more than anything else, I think I’ve learned that the most engaging stuff often doesn’t seem like the parts that would be. People almost never resonate with the parts of a story I expect them to… and the things they do resonate with are usually not what I would’ve thought to include. At least, I wouldn’t have before taking on this challenge. Ironically, it’s the “why it happened like that” stuff that I usually used to skip over.
And that seems to be the stuff people actually resonate with—the stuff that’s helped me share myself accessibly and connect more with others.
Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
265/365
When you tell someone "what" happened, do you include the "why?"
onward.
For more on this daily column and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory.
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