Why?

Recently I was having lunch with a friend and I mentioned something about a blog post.  I'd completely forgot this blog is my secret shared with only a select few. Her next question surprised me: "why?"

Why do I blog?  Why do I write?

The answer is really very simple.

Because, I have to.  Words jumble in my head and they cry to get out on paper. Regardless of their audience, regardless of their impact - raw, here's-where-I'm-at-now words just have to get out on paper.  

A few days ago I was at a business meeting with seven people.  My role in this particular work-group is strategic thinker, someone who challenges the status quo and says "is there a better way?".  Monthly we meet as a team to focus on our "finish strong" goals for 2014/2015; we are trying to complete a nasty project which has to put to bed.  My involvement in this team meeting was to determine if we had team buy-in on a critical driver in the success of this project.  We felt perhaps very few of us believed in the critical driver.  My job was to challenge us, to work through an exercise to see if the critical number was pie in the sky or a real possibility many hadn't grasped yet. If the team couldn't or didn't buy into the critical number, there would be some serious soul searching.  

The meeting was a smashing success for six of us. My involvement in the exercise was not about, but about showing where we've been, where we are and where we are going and then asking the right questions for each category. The critical questions I asked, and the direction I led the conversation helped the team say, in their words, "your critical driver is correct."  It was exactly what we'd hoped for, a team exercise using team synergy to answer a question critical to our collective success. I didn't know what the "aha" moments would be, but I knew they would come and they'd help push us forward.  When we had completed, all six of us took pictures of the white board to keep those memories alive.

But, there were seven of us at the meeting. The key person, our salesperson, was negative, critical and condescending during the entire meeting.  The six of us felt it.  Actually we stopped the meeting early and the three person leadership team assembled with our mouth's agape.... "what in the heck just happened." We had to figure that out before we moved on with her. However, despite our abrupt end, even the leadership meeting produced more "aha" moments to propel us forward.  As leaders we were ready to move, with or without her.

What her boss found out the next day was there was a complete disconnect between what the meeting was to be, and what she thought it was to be. She was done with the "drama" of it all and wanted to move ahead without any further communication about it.  I, on the other hand, as the strategic caregiver of this fragile company knew that the elephant in the room, not only her actions, but her beliefs still needed to be addressed - and we needed to be certain she understood roles and the process of "team".

My mind whirled for about 30 minutes and a memo to her was drafted in my head. I sat at my computer for 15-20 minutes and pounded it out, laying the foundation for the exercise, my role to strategically challenge actions, the role of team meetings to not be another "regular weekly meeting" but to dig deeper, and how each member of the team has their role to play in order for us to "finish strong".  Typed. Proofed once. Few edits. 2 pages done in 20 minutes.  

I forwarded it to her boss.  His reply "wow - you nailed it. perfect. forwarding." 

This second email response was "out of curiosity, how long did that take you to write?"

"20 minutes".  

"no way." (He isn't certain where the CAPS key is. Seriously.)

"Yes, way."


I live in my head.  My head swirls thoughts and ideas, and discouragements and dreams, and disappointments and joys, and sometimes the only way to get them out of my head is to take pen to paper, or these days, fingers to my keyboard and pound them out. 

Whether anyone reads them is (almost always) immaterial to the process of getting them out of my head so I can decide what to do this the mumbo jumbo mess.  

That is why I write. That is why I don't sugar coat. That is why I write with lots of "I"'s.  This is the story of me figuring out my life. Getting those swirling words out of my mind; working them through while pounding the keys.

That's the "why".