Concluding my daily writing challenge
In November, as many of you know, I set myself a goal to write a blog post every day until Christmas. I’ve had a few bumps and it wasn’t easy, but I wasn’t expecting it to be easy. The goal was really a way to challenge myself. Some days it felt like an absolute chore that I didn’t enjoy and some days I really loved it. The process taught me a few things about my writing, style, and inspiration too. I would say the most difficult part was making myself write when I had no idea what I wanted to write about and no inspiration. However, that taught me that I need to plan out my writing “schedule” and know ahead of time what the topic would be. That way I could think about it throughout the day and add depth to my writing. The other thing I learned from this is that I didn’t like taking less time on a post so I had a post every day. I prefer taking time, adding other sources and arguments to my writing, When I was creating a post every day I couldn’t take as much time as I wanted to develop my thoughts. My best posts are the ones I’ve taken a couple hours over a few days to write and edit.
The conclusion I got from all this is that I wanted to continue to write 2-3 posts per week, but take more time on those posts to really enjoy the process. I didn’t have an exact plan and was trying to decide what that would be when I happened to stumble upon a writing challenge.
Lessons in Parenthood: Week 1
I started a writing challenge for 2017 (I guess we’re calling them challenges now instead of resolutions). The challenge is to choose a topic and write about it weekly for 52 weeks. There were some great ideas out there. However, I almost feel that when you’re searching for inspiration and get a list of ideas it only heightens indecision. I already have this blog and I was trying to think of something different that would still fit into my style on that website. I let it simmer in my mind for a few days and came up with this. I write a lot about what I learn as a parent anyway, but I thought that a fresh outlook on it would be the key. The more I thought about the theme the more I liked it.
Parenthood. Different from parenting. I feel like the word “parenting” describes a one way street. It’s our actions towards our children. It’s how we, as adults, treat them in order to get whatever results we’re looking for, usually related to behavior. “Parenthood,” however, is a multi-directional highway of emotions and lessons. Parenthood is what we teach our children and what they teach us. It’s what we learn from our spouses. It’s the changes we experience from within. It’s the whole complex myriad of life events that a person goes through on the journey through life as they raise their children.
That’s what I decided to write about. I want to focus on the lessons I learn from my daughter, Olivia, and my second daughter after she is born in March. Children are such marvelous little beings and often don’t get the recognition for their brilliance.
One of the most inspirational figures to me as a parent is Fred Rogers. One moment in particular stats in my mind clearly. He was talking about children and he described them as “perfectly wonderful” and said, “I respect them deeply.” I had never heard someone describe children in that way. It was so beautiful and sincere that it really touched me. That experience led me to looking at children in a very different light, especially my own child.
Here’s to 2017 and learning many things from these perfectly wonderful little creatures.
My article as it appears on Medium.
