#secondarychallenge

It's been 5 days since my last post and while that doesn't technically mean that I had abandoned my pursuit of this million step goal (far from it), it did mean that I needed to re-examine the how relating to the way I'm documenting this journey.  

I really like the first post here on the blog as it challenged me both to write in a more in depth way and it gave me a much better opportunity to create a storyline that I think will help myself encapsulate the experience and give you some insight into the meaning that each challenge has. 

The problem in executing this is that my writing muscle is fairly atrophied due to the fact that a substantial portion of my professional career has been spent crafting Facebook and Twitter messages which are less than 141 characters. Only on two occasions since the completion of my undergraduate degree have I decided to write anything longer than 5,000 words. (For those wondering, the first was my master's thesis and the second was a plan to help scale my employer's social media fulfillment capability.)  

I also believe that an additional root cause of my lack of confidence to write in an essay format is tied to a couple of experiences with my father which I completely misinterpreted. (Hey Pop, if you ever read this, I love you. As you'll see, this one is on me.)

While I was in 7th or 8th grade I commented to my father that I thought that I wanted to be an attorney just like him during a completely normal dinner table discussion.  He flatly told me that I "didn't possess the language skills." Obviously, he was right. I was maybe 14 at the time.  His experience of writing for his high school and college newspaper was very different from my experience which included an obsession with baseball and video games. 

A few months later, I gave my father a three page paper for either a history or government class.  I forget which but both were subjects I had a moderately high interest in at that time. I asked him for his input on how to make my essay better. He did what any good former newspaper editor and attorney would do: he marked it all up in red and turned my three page paper into an 7-page teardown on how to improve my writing style and correct my grammatical errors. Obviously, part of me saw the sea of red and was completely mortified as this went against my internalized idea that I was a smart kid. This was not the most confidence inspiring moment in my young writing career.

At that point, in a completely expected teenage angst-y fashion, I swore never to share any of my school work with my father again before it was graded and I had it back from my teachers. The craziest part about this mini-grudge is that I somehow actually succeeded in doing it through all of high school.

Looking back there were two key problems with how I processed this situation; First, was that I misinterpreted the fact that my father's suggestions were a personal attack on me and my writing ability.  Obviously, this wasn't my father's intention. He was trying to help in the absolute best way that he knew how to make the content on the page better.

The second issue, and this is one I only learned about a year or so ago, is that senior attorneys improve the work of their more junior associates by simply showing them the right way to do things and changes are accepted en masse. Sure, if an associate has a quibble with a single line or two they can discuss that particular point but the vast majority of those suggested changes get the proverbial "Accept All Changes" button. I certainly had no clue at 14 that this was what was going the way he was trying to teach me.

Looking back, pairing an egotistical reaction with a lack of contextual awareness lead me to create a blind spot that was unaware of how poor my actual writing skill was. My father tried to point this out to me because he had the skills and the time to try and help me.  I refused his help on probably hundreds of occasions.  (Admittedly, not my smartest move.)

Making a bad situation worse was the fact that I continued to get good grades all through high school, college and grad school lulling me into thinking I was communicating effectively.  Social media and it's quick in-and-out style played to education that I did receive in traditional marketing and tagline writing but never provided an opportunity to do something longer form. 

This all brings me back to where I am now: seeking an opportunity to document a challenging experience in a medium that I am going to find challenging. Certainly sounds like a second opportunity for me to grow.  I'm not going to back down from it especially when it will make this more fun for both you and me.

No more daily data dumps. Also, I'm not going to have the expectation that I will be able to write this way every day so you can expect an update every few days going forward. Stories are a hell of a lot more fun to write and read.

Today, October 1st, is Day 15 of my 1 million steps in 45 days challenge. One-third of my time is gone at 11:59 P.M. tonight. Accordingly, tomorrow you'll get a long form update of what has happened in the last week including some of the ups and downs. I'm certainly excited to share it with you.