This Isn’t For You

Well, that isn’t very inviting, at least it’s honest. Let me give some context. I went to school to be an engineer. Ironically, I am a very impulsive person, but I despise doing things twice. So much so that I will research for hours and hours to make the “correct” decision. The problem is, life isn’t a math test. There are no right answers. There are a million different ways to get through life and a million ways to make each decision along the way. Don’t get me wrong, there are unhelpful ideas like eating my lawnmower for breakfast rather than something healthy, but I think you get the point.

If the point isn’t immediately apparent, it is that I have spent the majority of my life consuming information. I have also realized that this is a safety mechanism. If I stick in learning, I can’t really get something wrong. I can’t make a mistake. If I live in the theoretical, then there is nothing to tell me that I did something wrong or made a mistake. There is no feedback. There is no risk, and quite frankly there is no growth.

I just turned 29 at the end of March and leading up to my birthday I had this strong feeling that year 29 for me was going to be a year of output and zero input. No tv shows, no Facebook, no Instagram, no YouTube, no mindless research, no audiobooks, no podcasts, no input. Year 29 will be a year that focuses on the doing. What I realized while looking back, is that often times I would muster up the motivation to do some project and then completing that one would lead to another. Well shoot, as long as I have the drill and tools out I may as well work on that one more thing, and several hours later its way past my bedtime and my wife Megan is calling down the stairs telling me to go to be. The point being that doing tends to lead to more doing. My working theory is that by focusing on the output and not the input that this will be my most productive and effective year yet.

So, as I said, this is not for you, it’s for me. It is a place for output, not input. For documenting the doing and not just retreating to the learning. I plan to use this as a place to record the journey of my golf swing, recipe iterations, home projects, and other things that I want to get out of my head. There will be no posting schedule, no expectation of readership or growth, no optimized SEO strategy, no pandering to the peanut gallery, and not trying to have a perfectly formatted website with the “perfect” layouts and colors. There will be a variety of things; ideas that turn into actions, theories that get tested and challenged and revised as they come to reality, general ponderings, and many other things as I feel like it.

Here’s the best part. As I look to step out of the safety of learning, I am going to learn much more along the way while doing. The other thing is that as I post for myself and for my selfish desires, you will also probably pick up a thing or two along the way. So while I say that this isn’t for you, it really is. Sharing what I’ve learned is one of my greatest joys, and I imagine that we are all going to learn a lot along the way. I can’t wait to see what I do this year.