skratchpad

I have a love-hate relationship with new year's resolutions. I love that, in spirit, they are about setting and keeping goals that bring us closer to who we aspire to be.

I always seem to forget this part... start time: 1:23pm

I hate that I never keep them. I have failed every resolution I have made, often on the very first day. I even failed the resolution to not make resolutions. [insert MHwo post from NY 2010].

Yet I feel compelled make them. Which I love, because it is a manifestation of my drive to improve myself. But which I also hate, because why should I pursue failure so avidly?

I also hate that the new year part of the resolution defines January 1 as the start date. It's relatively arbitrary in the grand scheme of things. Who is to say January 1 is better than any other day to start a goal? Doing so almost condones the indulgence bad behavior and bad habits up until January 1. Why not April 7 at 3:04pm? Why is that not a good time to start a goal? Or right now?

We're all works in progress. We all have aspirations for who we want to be and how we want to live. Each day is an opportunity to get a little bit closer to achieving that aspiration. Sure, some things need to be done before others, such as paying off a certain debt before splurging on the next big thing [find a better example].

Or telling a story in a particular order. Like this story, it would be better told in a different order. I think.

My 2011 resolution is to tackle several goals that I have, but to tackle them in bite-size ways that allow me to move toward my aspiration self, without feeling overwhelmed, like there are a million things I want to accomplish and only [insert the number of] minutes in a day. So I've decided to tackle 12 30-day goals. This works out to roughly one per month. However, I'm already on January 2nd and failed at the first one I laid out for myself. Good thing a year has 365 days, giving me 5 days to spare. Well, only 4 now as I've burned one.

Of course, I could make my first 30-day goal something that takes into account something I accomplished yesterday. That limits my options to goals that involve Twitter, Facebook, taking naps, watching movies, eating unhealthy food and spending time with a particular boy. While all sound more fun, none of them make for good daily goals. Except maybe for the boy...

So I'm back to burning a day. And figuring out what first 30-day goal is going to be.

Some possibilities, in no particular order, include:

Cleaning for 30 minutes a day every day for 30 days. I've tried this one before [insert links to 43 Things, Zeelog or other places I've referred to this goal], and have failed. But I'm not very domestic, which is to say I'm excel at being messy. I'd much rather excel at having a presentable house. I say presentable, because clean might be too much of a stretch at this point in my life.

Writing for 30 minutes a day every day for 30 days. Remember it was the goal I outlined in my first post, also my most recent post, here.

Contributing content to a daily challenge site. Two I'm already part of are 365project and Tweak Today.

Running.

It's likely that I'll start with the writing one. This piece would make day 1 accomplished.

I've referenced 30-day goals twice here now, and haven't even explained what it is and how it came about. Perhaps that's a good skratchpad post for tomorrow...

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Today I begin a new experiment: To write one post a day, in 30 minutes or less, every day for 30 days.

It's a goal. Goals are good, ergo this is good, right? Maybe. It depends on the why - what is it specifically that I am trying to accomplish with this goal.

Side note: I started this post at 10:09 am.

To sum up quite a few conversations, I want to be more prolific in the space of social media. Not because I think I'm an expert, but because I know that...

I know a lot about it.

I get it.

I understand the potential for personal and professional use.

I love it.

It's made my life richer, and I want to share that.

I want to protect the kool-aid.

I also love to share what I know with others. Plenty of people are involved in social media, but there are even more yet to come for the first time. We all have independent reasons for using social media. I have mine, you have yours, and these certainly don't have to be the same. But for the person who doesn't get social media, they don't even have the opportunity to discover how it can have meaning in their lives. This is not to say that everyone should be involved in social media, but that's another story for another time, or perhaps just a story that you get by researching other blogs on the subject. I'd like to help people understand if social is right for them, and if it's right, help the tackle the strategies, tactics, platforms and simple hows that make it go round.

I normally have these types of conversations in person. In fact, that may be my preferred method, but I'm only one person and in-person isn't always scalable. Blogging, tho not a substitute, can help. Which brings me to my problem. I love to write, but it takes me so effing long. I draft, edit, redraft, edit. proof, perfect till 30 minutes has turned into 3 hours and I still have typos or left something out. If that's the process, blogging isn't scalable either.

I want to write better. I want to write faster. I want to write better and faster. And the only way to do both is to practice.

So I'm going to try to write one post a day, in 30 minutes or less, every day for 30 days. I'll write it here, on my skratchpad. I'll transcribe my thoughts free-flow, and if I have time, edit until my 30 minutes are up. There will be rambling. There will be typos. And I will be OK with that, when it's posted here.

My plan, then, is to revisit these posts later in day, and spend a second 30 minutes organizing and editing my ramblings into a more polished form for presentation on my primary blog, Ms. Herr when online, or perhaps even on The Terralever Blog.

This is practice. This is discipline. This is skill development in action.

And yes, I'm aware that skratchpad is misspelled. Purposely so. I've always been partial to this particular spelling. I think it's more fun. And it definitely says something about my intentions for this blog.