Blog Challenge

This past weekend my son Chris and I decided to accept the challenge of authoring 500 word each day and posting those writing daily for two weeks. The challenge starts tomorrow, Monday  July 30th.  But ever the over achiever I decided to start today.

The topic arose while visiting family in Madison WI.  My eldest son Mike has secured a new job in La Crosse WI  Mike has done well working for WEST  as a sales manager at a call center.   However  his new position is a move that provides a hefty raise , opportunity for professional growth, and an apartment that  moves him MUCH closer to Emma, so close they will be moving into together in quaint Galesville WI.  New starts are the entwinement of  both excitement and fright.  Far too often people wilt at the fear and choose the status quo.  Mike worked hard to find a new job and now the possiblity of his new life with Emma is huge.

It was a pleasant Saturday evening at the Baymont Inn’s courtyard when the Helmers clan convened to to  eating cheese  and crackers with home-brews, craft brews and wine.  It was during the discussion of Mike’s move the conversation shifted too the power of taking chances and moving forward. Mike said the goodbyes at West were hard. Many of this coworkers will miss him greatly. He mentioned that his parting email quoted Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote….. ” Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”  Since high school Mike has appreciated this quote and it encapsulates his point of view on THIS new adventure. Far too few of his collegues and failed to take that step. And his hope that in some small way, he might be a model for others.

The conversation ebbed and flowed as the sun gently set. Chris and I took a queue from this conversation brought it into a different direction.  We spoke of the power of the written word and how to get better at it.  I once read that if you write 500 words per day and do it daily, you’ll quickly hone your skills and improve not only speed of your writing, but also the qualit . We kicked around a number of ideas  and we concluded there is shortage of great topics.  We have much to say and great writing speaks the truth.

As it became dark I repeated  my belief that  we must be brave in life. That the things your most proud of are those difficult accomplishments, ones that were hard, a grind, frightening and exhausting. That  despite the pain and suffering you  pull through and cross the finish line.  And maybe, if only in a small way, accepting the challenge of writing 500 words of day, might be yet another way of making these thoughts real. And so it begins.