Into the Deep - Out on a Limb - No Risk, No Reward - Pick Your Slogan

It's been ages since I last posted, but not many days go by when I do not think about my blog. I miss writing. I miss having more time to reflect, ponder, and write. This is just a new phase of life when needs and demands and interests are different, more pressing, less flexible, and whatever else.

Also, being candid: I did some of my best blogging while at my old job. Blogging on lunch hour and - ok, fine! - extended lunch hour was a treasure. 

But I still read a lot. This week a stack of ripped-from-magazine leaflets and Xerox'd pages from books called for my attention. This materials haven't seen the light of day in years. One quote really hit me, though, and I want to share it. It's from the musician Sting, and his contribution to a book is titled Let Your Soul Be Your Bookie:

"I sometimes think that we men seek thrills because we don't always have the courage to take real risks, whether they're the emotional risks necessary in successful personal relationships or practical ones, as in changing jobs.

"True risk, that sudden leap into cold water, can carry you into a state of grace. Coincidences, synchronicity, chance, karmic charm - it doesn't matter what you call it, there's a positive force that intervenes to cover your back. Things click. It makes sense because true risk is the only thing that forces spiritual and emotional growth so immediately, so dramatically.

"In my life, there's always been a connection between risk and luck. A lot of people approach risk as if it's the enemy, when it's really fortune's accomplice. A risk you take may seem ridiculous to other people. But risk isn't random or rash when it's a necessity.

"It always has impressed me that the Chinese pictogram for crisis is identical to the one for opportunity. I'm convinced that taking risks redeems, restores, and reinvents. So the next time you're overwhelmed by curiosity, or the prospect of change makes your stomach heave and the ground beneath your feet rumble, my advice is: Don't look back. 

"Risk is sitting on your shoulder, my friend. Nothing in your life is beyond redemption. Dive into that cold water. All bets are off."

*   *   *

Over the next three months, as a frequent non-risk taker, I'd love to write about the times when I did take risks: 

why, when, how did I feel before, how did I feel after? 

What initially held me back? 

What prompted me to proceed? 

What were the outcomes? 

Looking back, would I say that the risks were worth all of the fraught feelings and planning and others' expectations? 

Would I do anything differently?

Ditched: A Love-Hate Story

So said, theoretically at least, my long-running To-Do List.

I started 2020 with a resolution to ditch my to-do list. Going back to at least 2012, I had kept a weekly running to-do list on my work laptop, tracking projects that were due. I started each week by tallying projects and meetings in an e-mail that I'd then send to myself. This handy reminder soon broke the dam, as I began to:

1) add a plethora of non-work items to the to-do list, such as items to keep track of on the home front and at church;

and, perhaps more egregiously,  

2) update the to-do list multiple times each day, crossing off items electronically and e-mailing the new list to myself. 

It was clear to me, throughout this process, that my zest for keeping this to-do list was like a fever that refused to break. It dominated a lot of my time. I thought it was making me more productive - if not necessarily more efficient - and perhaps I could make a strong argument that I was more productive for keeping a running tally. 

That's all ancient history now, so no use recapping or defending this in more detail. I ditched my to-do list at work at the beginning of this year, and it's so refreshing. I am more efficient and productive; I can feel the change. 

Also, I can feel a sense of being less beholden to both keeping a list at all, and to maintaining it with the frequency that I used to apply to these to- do lists. I definitely don't miss my to-do list, and I get back an allotment of time each day, so that's a win.

Where to Begin?

What have I done to my blog? 

For many years, it had been a source of tremendous joy, a creative outlet, and a way to chronicle my family's ups and downs. The blog recorded the mundane, the funny, the frustrating, and the hopes of us Wilson Warriors. It still could, of course.  

Last night was my birthday dinner with Becky and our four kids sitting around our dining room table on loan from her parents. My wife asked me, "What words best describe you?" The easiest ones: husband, dad, son, believer, worker, friend, reader.

And then, with no forced melancholy in my voice but real, true longing, I added: writer. 

Writing has been a powerful outlet, a solace, a passion for many years. I'd lose myself in high school when I got home by firing up my dad's Apple desktop computers. Writing, both academic and personal, continued with a flare through college, and one of the best pieces of advice I have ever actually taken was when my friend Jenny Richardson advised me to keep a journal during my Junior Year Abroad in Germany. Speaking of her: I regret that we lost touch 15 years ago. She was a great friend for a time of life. We bonded over German stuff, weird art films, the Red Sox, 

I continued journaling and personal writing for the two years I lived at my parents' home after college - partly as creative expression, partly to ward off the loneliness I felt as I saw others move ahead on life's milestones, partly as a way to try to figure out who I was. Same thing for the first two years of living in the Boston area. And when blogging became a thing many years ago, I eagerly jumped aboard, dovetailing as it did with starting a family and wanting to record the many moments of life with newborns, infants, toddlers, and little kids. It's all such rich material.

Reviewing these times of life when I had both time and passion to write makes me realize that I've been wrong for a while now. Occasionally over the past few years, I'd post to my blog about not having the time to write. While that may have been true, it was not the full story, and inherently I knew it was not the total picture. As it relates to my blog, last year my oldest daughter started asking me to be much more sensitive about what photos of her I post online. I've tried to honor that. In doing so, it's had a ripple effect for what I post online about all of my kids. Being more mindful of their social media profile has been so important, and it comes with a cost, as it's virtually eliminated a tremendous resource for much of my blogging. So, okay, that is another reason why my writing has dwindled. But I'll take my kids' concerns and honoring their wishes over plastering their life story without their permission any day.  

But these legit reasons aside, I was dishonest with myself, placing all of the blame on one reason (no time) or several reasons (time, privacy) so as not to expose and confront something less savory and more in my control about writing: passion.

Maybe my passion for writing is gone. I didn't want to admit it, because it would reveal something about myself that I didn't want to confront: that I may be moving on from writing, at least for a season of life. It's a loss. It's akin to a person who used to get tremendous joy and fulfillment and purpose in running, then being sidelined by a nagging injury or another life-gets-in-the-way reason, only to return to running and find that the passion has gone out. 

Writing has been a foundational piece of my identity. So what does it mean for my identity when writing fades from view? And while time is a resource I can point to and say, "I can carve out X  amount once a week to write," passion is a resource that is harder to quantify and, thus, work toward improving. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe I'm looking for an excuse to soften the blow of dwindling passion? 

Case in point: I started a draft in the fall of 2019 about the demise of the Soviet Union. I never returned to complete the draft, which I scheduled to post in December 2019. Weeks after it posted, I returned to my blog to see it there in its unfinished, messy state - and I have done nothing to correct it.   

It's not clear to me what this means for my family's blog. Maybe this is a season of life where I place writing on a shelf. Maybe some other burgeoning foundational piece of my identity takes precedent, filling in the space on my calendar and in my soul where writing used to hold near-permanent status. 

Time (and passion) will tell.

The longing for something gone will always be familiar.