Ground Swell

Typically I blog about emotions; expression there of, what invokes them and how mine have been impacted. Tonight, I speak fundamentally to a very basic inspiration. Also, since a "blog" is a web log and I wish to log the goal I am about to set for myself.

We draw inspiration from the strangest of resources sometimes. I believe sometimes we wait for a significant event just so we can tie together that occurrence with a change we want to make. I certainly invoke the spirit of a New Year by making certain resolutions and the following is one.

I will not cite the article specifically but I read one about Jerry Seinfeld recently and I have not been able to get the influence of it out of my head. I am not even a Seinfeld fan per se but the author of this article shared some words of wisdom from one of the most successful actors ever.

Paraphrasing Seinfeld's words, he said the key to his success was basically repetition. He made sure every day he was writing jokes and he did his best to not break that daily streak. You would think the secret to a man's $850 million dollar net worth would be something more profound but to him it is just that simple. This man is obviously talented but success boils down to effort. Now, he never said you had to write a side-splitting comedy scene daily or a perfect set-ending joke before bed time, he just said you had to write 'something' every day and not break the streak.

He said not to break the chain in working towards perfecting a craft you have a passion for. Poetry has always been my passion. I think back and recognize that I wrote my first poem at age 13 and wrote my most recent one this year at age 37. I could say I have been writing poetry for 24 years but that is bullshit. Why? I stopped what I was doing last night and counted every poem that I have ever written and realized I have written 48 in that time span. Taking those 48 and spanning them over those 24 years, that means I've been writing 0.006 poems per day (if I round up).

No wonder I think my content sucks, I have hardly done any work!

I acknowledge that I have been worried of what people would think of bad content. Moving forward into 2017 I will be making the decision, posting the content regardless of quality and just working towards not breaking that cycle. The goal? 365 Instagram posts in the 2017 calendar year. Some of this work will not be good. Hopefully the exercise and spent time will pay off to greater and more frequently good work.

So here is to 2017 and an increased level of effort towards a passion that I have neglected for egotistical concerns. Here is to the rest of you finding your passion or rediscovering it and doing something with it. Finally, here is to adding passion and compassion to 2017 in general. We could certainly damn well use it given how we all lacked it in 2016.

Onward and upwards, my friends!