31 days of 500 words! That equals 15,500 words if I stuck to 500 words, but I did not. There were days I wrote much more. How does it feel to accomplish this? Well, for me to go from, “Why did I start this, I won’t be able to keep up?” to “Holy crap, this really has been 31 days!” It feels incredible. (The punctuation in that last bit is bothering me, I will go back for an edit at a later time. I have the finish line right in front of me and I can’t stop now)!
Accomplishment, it is a good feeling. I didn’t let myself down and I grew some trust in me. On top of that I bared my deepest thoughts with a lot of people, some I don’t even know or haven’t seen in a very long time. Why is that important? Because it is not something the me I used to be would ever do. I would have excuses for why I should not do it:
“No one is going to read your stuff.”
“It’s going to sound stupid.”
“You’re not a writer.”
The fact is, if you can speak, you can write. I had a book by that name back in college and that book meant a lot to me. Back then though, I was still afraid to share anything I wrote. If you can speak, you can write is absolutely true; just use your fingers instead of your vocal chords, tongue, mouth, and lips. Heck! I’m saving a lot of energy just putting this down with my fingers and hands.
Speaking is much harder than writing and there is never room for edits. Once that sound leaves your lips you are done! There is power in the spoken word, certainly. Sometimes that power is mistaken by the receiver and stays in their mind forever. Sometimes it builds its own story in that mind and becomes something much bigger than it was intended to be in the first place. Yes, the spoken word is dangerous.
About a year back, I had a conversation with my son and daughter-in-law. They were wondering why I used writing to convey a message to them instead of just calling. (I guess I am not of this new high-tech world). I told them I preferred to write when I have something important to convey. It’s much easier for me to get my real thoughts down on a page instead of conversing and missing areas I would have missed in normal conversation over the telephone. The other side of spoken conversation is the listener. Did the listener grasp what I meant to say in the way I meant to say it? Do you know what they did after I told them that? They thanked me. I let them know I have a problem gathering my thoughts and pouring them out through my mouth in a moment’s notice and they accepted that.
At the beginning of this whole challenge, I asked the question, “What is 500 words?” The answer was, it was what I had written that day. Today I am looking back at over 15,500 words and that seems incredible to me, the doubter. I want to keep up this habit and fill blogs with positive things for people to read. Whether someone reads them or not, the writing will be there, my thoughts on the page, ready and waiting.
Thank you.
