This is my 201st post! I wish that my 200th had been about something more exciting than spider solitaire, but I didn’t plan ahead. No matter. It’s simply wonderful to have made it past the 200 mark.
Now let’s go back in time to the night of November 1, 2006—the beginning of last year’s NaNoWriMo. I was so energized by my first day of writing that I couldn’t sleep. I turned the light back on, grabbed my shabby little journal, and wrote about the experience. It must have been about 3:00 a.m., so please be impressed by the coherency.
November 1, 2006
There is nothing like writing a story to make you ponder the relationship between cause and effect, stimulus and response. It makes me wonder how many people are out there, just like me, persistently misunderstanding the scope of their own control. We fret over those things over which we have no control, such as the actions of other people. Yet in those things that we can control in the course of our everyday lives, we often feel that we can only react to outside stimulus.
It’s a common thing in fantasy novels for the protagonist start on his journey because of something that was forced upon him. Frodo did not find the ring or ask for it. It was given to him and then darkness descended upon him and he had to react. But it is important to realize that we can instigate our own adventures. Even Frodo did that. He didn’t have to take on the task of saving Middle Earth. It may have been outside forces that pushed him, but he could have gone in any one of infinite ways.
It is scary the amount of control that we have. I could decide today that I will not go to work and instead, I will pack up some necessities and live out of my car for weeks. I could plan a trip to Greece. I could create any kind of adventures for myself. I could not control its every event or eventual outcome, but I could instigate it. I could cause it to be.
How much power I have!