My friend Mur, author of the wonderful Playing for Keeps (don’t stop, just order and read, trust me) posted a blog entry that resonated with me on every level possible.
First, go here and read it. Done? Yes, I like Zefrank too.
Anyway, just the other day, Ann and I had a conversation in which we expressed our frustration with life. We’re doing fine but we’ve been feeling like we’ve been running up a gravel hill for some time now. Ann put it best when she pointed out that we were doing better when we were younger and were taking more risks. We weren’t doing the safe and smart thing all of the time. Not that we were being stupid, we were just worrying less and being a bit more adventurous. And it paid off for us. But these last few years, we’ve been making safe choices, doing smart things, being (dare I say it?) conservative (no, not that kind of conservative) and it hasn’t been paying off for us. We’ve felt stymied and defeated and, generally, less fulfilled.
We were thinking that it was time to take some risks again. No, we don’t need to take the kinds of risks that could result in the loss of health and home but we can take the kinds of risks that make us feel alive and are personally and maybe even financially rewarding.
It was in the few days after that conversation, as we both began spinning out some of the ways we can change things and move ourselves forward in a new direction that I saw Mur’s post and it struck me that we do not necessarily need to think large. We can do this on the micro-level and the aggregate will be the kind of rewards we are looking for.
So, on the heels of both of these, I took the one idea I’ve been playing with the last few days and decided to run with it full steam ahead. We’ll see where that leads me. It’s a start and I’m feeling pretty excited about it.