Turning 67 today, I’ve decided to pivot again with my blogs.
I like to blog as a transparent conversation with myself. I keep a journal but it’s an info dump, unfocused and all-encompassing. A blog has underlying purpose, something that is (hopefully) designed to enhance the way one lives.
Two years ago, I reevaluated the blog I’d run for five years, called Big Decade. The Big Decade blog, as it was conceived on my 60th birthday, was designed to challenge me by harnessing my natural obsessiveness. Under the Big Decade logic, each calendar year I would choose a daily challenge or activity, and commit to tackling it for each of the 365 days of the year. I tackled writing, tough hikes, jogging, meditating, music listening, learning about self-publishing, etc., etc. Big Decade worked well for five years, until … until it didn’t. Suddenly I was tired of push, push, push. I was older.
So, two years ago, I began to blog on a new site, called cryptically Slow Glow to 70. The idea was to calm the f___ down, to be steady and calm, to glow rather than burn.
Slow Glow to 70 worked well for two years and then … and then it didn’t. I need an extra push (a health scare helped, I can tell you!). So I’m going back to complete the full ten years of Big Decade.
This time the annual challenges of Big Decade will less physical, more cognitive or emotional or (dare I say it) spiritual. But the new Big Years won’t be any less onerous for being cerebral rather than body-punishing. They’ll be tough. And I can hardly wait.
Tomorrow … my first new Big Year. (As I did back on my 60th birthday, I’ll run the first Big Year for over a year, from my birthday to the end of the next calendar year.)