A Mountaineer Once Told Me "Just 50 Words a Day . . ."

This was when I worked at a gym as a personal trainer. I was perhaps initially too shy for the gig but was just about to hit quota when I was fired officially for being non-productive and unofficially for not filling out paper work on time and being tardy. It's one of the few positions in life that I compare to others and realize what a great opportunity it was to work with people.

Working with people can often be a mixed bag. But for this entry I'll say that it eventually becomes clear that it is all we were meant for. Even the loneliest or most isolated job is something that others rely upon. We are meant to affect each other's lives and I've come to appreciate the chance inspirations that happens when other's see a chance potential in me.

"50 words a day," he said. "It doesn't matter what it is. Stream of consciousness, poetry, prose. Just write it and you will find after a month or two or three, when you go back and read it over, that all your themes, characters, motivations, revelations are all there." In essence, writing a book can't be hard if you are simply doing it. It's the actual doing that is paramount.

For a while my great endeavor was just to be up early, but I'd get up and wonder what to accomplish first and usually be lost in the mire. Video games, going back to sleep, or investing time in some other distraction was the easies way to approach that limbo of time that I gathered for myself without an action I could commend to it. By writing early, I can reassert my claim on the process and my future. I can begin to accomplish the dream by instituting a new habit during a time where idleness would have its way.

What's odd is how a truth can exist with you for years but until you state it, record it, accept it, promise it to yourself, see its connection with everything you are, you may let it go. It's similar to how I've dealt with voting in the past. It's a responsibility to place upon yourself and it's one aimed at declaring yourself continually into the presence and future simultaneously. It is also one equally dismissed by an off-track perspective, left to be accomplished "later." Tomorrow does not technically exist as a thing we can confirm upon.

There is no easy or simple way to live well. You are either true with yourself and vigilant to observe that truth and respond to it, or you become a house of chaos. I have an inkling that 50 words a day may be all I need to light the way.