Writing to roll a 5 or an 8

None of what I write below is new or novel, and that is the frustrating, unique struggle of our existence - that we must each learn a set of universal lessons anew, as if each is a square we must reach in the game of life. We are born naive and impressionable, all required to make the same mistakes in hopes of learning each lesson required to reach that final square on the board.1 We are capable enough to observe how others have played yet arrogant enough to think that we know better or our game is different. This is the sick twist of the game - we may think we have conquered the lesson's square, but it often takes some (many) reckonings to actually confirm, to truly internalize each of these lessons.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality, and I have finally taken stock of my position in the game, realizing I am missing the piece that unlocks not just opportunity, but paves the way to some sense of peace: I must learn to fear less. To extend the silly metaphor, I've realized fear is my Alan Parrish (Robin Williams) in Jumanji - it has trapped me for decades, and I need someone (me) to play without fear, to roll a 5 or an 8, in order to release me from this mental prison.

So my move is committing to now blog for 100 straight days - talking about my projects, my thoughts, with no commitments on subject (although most will be technical), as an experiment on fearing less. The only thing I will commit to is to write, for 100 days. I will be less concerned about the polish - in fact, I need practice pushing out (hopefully helpful) content without agonizing over how it is perceived every possible way and imagining future consequences of oversharing. If nothing changes, nothing changes...and something needs to change. If fear is my Alan Parrish, then this post is my first roll.

Footnotes

  1. There clearly isn't an end square in this game; there is no Jumanji; it's both a silly metaphor and an homage to the existential question of what are we doing any of this for anyway - a topic for another post, I'm sure. ↩