I normally use the 11th of January (1-11, or 'one-one-one') as a place, or as a convenient time, where I will challenge myself. Where I will attempt something I have never attempted before.
Speaking of the date, I wonder what time it is. Hold on a sec. I'm going to go check. Dont go anywhere. I'll be back in a jiffy.
Okay, I'm back. Looks like it's 1:11 pm. Here on the Left coast.
It's later than I thought.
Now I will be the first to admit that sometimes I bite off more than I can chew, particularly when I might be trying to impress a super-hottie.
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» This Might be a Good Place to Fan Out My Peacock Writing Feathers
Particularly when I fan out my peacock-feathers for a super-hottie. My writing peacock feathers.
See, I do not know how my writing feathers might happen to appear to a super-hottie.
Because I have never been a sexually attractive female sizing up a male peacock, so to speak, based primarily on his artistic abilities and sensibilities.
Were it not by chance that a super-hottie (or two) happened to lay their eyes on the fruits of my sullen wordcraft, I still might not know to this day.
A part of me does not understand their internal workings, and not a small part, either. But I cannot deny the effect.
So I tend to be more careful now. More prudent. More judicial. More targeted in my scope .. when I fan out my writing peacock feathers with things that I know super-hotties will like.
Things that will touch them and speak to them in ways that I know they will not be able to resist. (Because they themselves have told me so.)
» A Sparkly Distraction or a Muse-like Creature Who Evokes Eyebrow-Raising Things?
These feathers I might fan out for someone who catches my eye. For someone who piques my curiousity. For someone who arouses my interest. And this can distract from the initial intention.
Already I can hear their call. I can feel their pull. Drawing me toward them with this seemingly irresistible attraction that pulls on you and draws you toward them.
Every step I take in their direction is richly rewarded. So, perhaps they are distracting me from my mission. My assigned mission. My seemingly impossible mission.
To boldly go where no carbon-based sentient being has gone before. To boldly do what has never been done. In the history of planet Earth.
These are the voyages of the starships that rise up from time to time, from someplace deep within. Super-hotties love stuff like this.
So, instead of a distraction, perhaps the call and the lure and the draw of these super-hotties .. might be where I will find a secret key, that takes me to secret places ..
.. where I learn of secret things, and secret techniques, and secret mysteries .. things that I could get no other way.
I have a good story that would fit in perfectly here, because it nicely illustrates what I am talking about.
But I do not have time to tell you that story right now. Because I am a man on a mission.
But it deals with a warm sesame-oil massage that I got the night before an exam that was the hardest ever.
My ego wants me to tell this story because this is where I heard for the first time somebody say to me, "Dude, you *are* the man." But my ego will have to wait.
» Who Are You, Dude? .. Who Are You Really?
Instead of choking on the over-sized bite that I might've tried to ingest .. and failing at a project that was too big for me to tackle ...
More often than not I end up surprising myself. Because these are often projects that will take me out of my comfort zone and cause me to grow .. in a number of ways.
I once heard a guy say that if you werent failing on a regular basis, then that meant you werent trying hard enough.
He asserted that by lounging idly in the seemingly safe surroundings of your now-familiar comfort zone .. that this is exactly what causes the stagnation ..
.. the psychological stagnation, whereby you find today, in our twenty-first century zeitgeist, you find seemingly grown adults who act like they are in the third grade.
Their bodies kept right on growing, but for some reason or other, something inside of them .. their soul, their psyche, perhaps. Whatever you want to call it, something inside stopped growing at a juvenile level.
When I return much later to review and inspect the fruits of some of these self-imposed challenges that I use to foster personal growth and to stimulate artistic development ..
.. I will sometimes find myself looking back over both shoulders .. to see if somebody isnt back there, whispering secrets into my ear .. while I am writing.
Secrets truths. Things about the future that I could not have possibly known. Things long hidden.
While I am putting into words these things that rise up from inside - things that surprise even me, sometimes - I will say to the writer in me ..
"Who are you, dude? Who writes like this? Who says things like that? Who are you really?"
I could continue along these lines ad infinitum, but I dont want to get distracted from the job at hand.
But I will admit that, sometimes, when this happens .. when this 'Who-are-you-really?' sort-of-thing happens, a voice will say, "Dude, you were trying to impress that girl."
And the implication here is that some super-hottie somewhere is somehow involved in me creating things that take my craft, the fruits of my wordcraft, to new levels that I didnt even know existed.
Would I have been able to accomplish such things without them? I dont see how. And really, why would I ever want to?
» Goodbye Comfort Zone
Pretty much the only rule that applies to these entries, to these annual forays into the unknown .. is that it must be something that takes you out of your comfort zone.
You are looking here for something that will genuinely challenge you, and that will cause you to use muscles that you did not know you had.
To employ new muscles, and to develop these new muscles, these new skills, and new tricks .. that you can carry with you into future endeavors.
Into future challenges. Into future realms where you can test yourself with even bigger challenges.
» Preparing Yourself to Take Things to the Next Level
Growth is the thing that you are looking for here .. the thing you are striving for. Meaningful growth. In some meaningful way.
This growth doesnt have to be big, but it must be meaningful. To you. It must be something that is meaningful to you.
» What Only You Can Write
For me, this might be something, some topic or some area, that I am uniquely qualified to speak to.
There is a bit of writer's lore out there, in the form of advice that says the writer should write what s/he and only s/he can write.
The end of growth represents the beginning of death. So I try to find something that makes me feel alive. Something that makes me feel alive forever.
I am looking for some thing or some area where I can try myself. Where I can test myself. Where I can test the mettle of my very soul .. whatever it might be at the time that genuinely puts me to the test.
Even better is to find something that will challenge you enough that it forces you to seek strength and help from places beyond yourself. From forces bigger than yourself. Stronger than yourself. You feel me.
"So," you ask, "what does this have to do with pattern-matching and with Russell Moore?"
Good question. Glad you asked.
This is the end of this page. ■
This theme continues here » Pattern-Matching with Dr. Russell Moore for a Look at the Moral Legacy of the White Evangelical - Page Two (11 Jan 2021).
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