Today, I was delighted to be featured as a guest blogger on Advanced Riskology. Prior to the post, I got to suggest a few words for my byline, and after some debate I decided I would be bold enough to claim that I was "of" Chase Your Unicorn. Well, that seems harmless enough...so why the debate?
On the upside, this particular phrasing, I believed, was quite choice as it would make my written endeavors sound substantiated. To say we are "of" an entity implies that the power to grant association lies above us - thus the world (i.e. the readers of my guest post) will assign some credence to what I say.
On the downside, if you can read a calendar, you can tell that it's been awhile since my last post. 407 days, to be exact. And here I am, taking people who I'm trying to convince of my legitimacy, and directing them to a webpage that reveals I've taken a hiatus from self-imposed responsibility. I imagine most personal branding experts would advise against this.
So, why would I do this? If you read the guest post, you'll understand that I've been trying to increase my adventure tolerance. Part of that exercise - the simpler and more fun part - fits the modern view of adventure. Go new places! Meet new people! Eat new types of grilled cheese!
But there's a dark side: to tap into the full value of adventure means I'm going to have to confront situations I actively avoid. These aren't just things which, if given the opportunity, I'd choose not to do. These are the things I go out of my way to not deal with. Taking sidestreets so I won't run into that friend who lives on the main road, whose call I still haven't returned after two months. Shrugging off the topic of "that unicorn blog you started", so I don't have to acknowledge that a giraffe could have grown and delivered a baby in the time since I last wrote.
I'll say it again: these are things I go out of my way to not deal with. I'm investing time and energy for the pleasure of enjoying long, chronic, inconvenient anxiety. And I've convinced myself this is a great idea.
Sounds like an addiction, doesn't it?
I am addicted, situationally. Addicted to evasion. It's draining, and it leads to disappointment and humiliation in personal relationships, work responsibilities, or athletics. Then I end up investing even more energy in trying to stitch up the now worsened problem, or in explaining it away until a future date when it will be even harrier.
There's plenty of talk about energy conservation in the external world: "If we aren't careful with our resources now, we're going to pollute our earth, we're going to run out, and we're not going to be able to fix it." But if we look hard, the same may be true internally as well.
So tell me:
What's robbing your resource bank, and when are you going to confront it?
What adventure will that make you free to pursue?
