Getting Started--Again

"Good writing," pens best-selling author, thinker, and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head." 

Part of my work-daily routine since July 2020 is the nearly 2-hour commute to and from work. I've drifted through hours of music, audiobooks, phone calls, or just spending quiet time drifting through my head. Not much in there anymore, it seems. The head to the soul/spirit is like the stomach to the body--it must be fed. All these months I've wrestled with life as it now is and truthfully, I hate it. For nearly 20 years I worked in my niche and then everything changed. My routine was destroyed and I've struggled to find a way to piece back a semblance of what I had, which included feeding my soul and strengthening my spirit. Anyone who knows me understands how important reading and writing are to me. 

May I be transparent? I nearly gave up. The context in which I once thrived was gone. I nearly gave up on life until I realized how much pain I would cause while trying to escape my own. I nearly gave up on reading and writing and cast myself into the gears of the retail machine, but am working myself to death. I wear three phones and one radio, managing two fleets and the business of a store nearly an hour away from where I live. At the beck and call of everybody. When do I have time to read or write, among other things? 

I have to thank Malcolm Gladwell for reminding me that I have to make the time. In my daily commute, I started listening to podcasts. Now, I don't like talk radio, but I found some golden nuggets in The Art of Manliness and The Daily Stoic podcasts. I've learned so much in my "mobile classroom." Then one day Ryan Holiday introduced to this man "with a beautiful voice," Malcolm Gladwell. I feel as if a new mentor was brought into my life. I started listening to his podcast, Revisionist History, and received an unspoken challenge to make the time. Make the time to read, to write, to tell a story, to share what's going on upstairs. Ain't nobody stopping me but me.

When I started this blog in 2009, the purpose was to share what was in my head (see definition in the banner). I want to set the goal of writing one page of original content per day. This is such a difference when I could write five or ten blogs in advance. It's like starting over. But it needs to be done. Perhaps someone somewhere will benefit. I've always said that nobody knows what you are thinking unless you open your mouth or put pen to paper (as it were) and what Malcolm Gladwell says about writing resonates and inspires me to get started--again.