Interlude - ❦ One Hundred Days is a Long Time to do Anything

Interlude -  ❦ One Hundred Days is a Long Time to do Anything

I am back from my work in Ghana, and the entire experience was one solid gift, from the planning, implementing and processing portions of the experience - all of it combined was like getting a PhD. Although we had been asked to come back to continue our work in capacity development - I left much richer, more humble and with more confidence than ever before.  Every moment was life affirming. A gift indeed.

While I was in Ghana, the woman with whom I was working, Cathy, said something that is really important about this experience of 100 days of giving. She said, “one hundred days is a long time to do anything” and I agree. She also asked me some questions about the chronology of the actual one hundred days of giving exercise and the additional exercise of writing the journal which is what you are all reading in this blog. She, as other readers who have asked me the same thing, had some confusion about the time line of the events about which I have been writing and so I will take this post to clarify.

The actual exercise of giving occurred in 2004 and took place over a one hundred day span. Now, as many of you know from my latest posts, there were some days during those one hundred days that I did not give anything, in fact, over the course of the one hundred days, there are three days where I forgot or my “blahness” took over and I did not complete the daily exercise. No excuses. One hundred days is a long time to do anything. In my writing I shared that in hindsight, I was giving myself the gift of a day off, or of patience, or of taking care of myself and I still hold to that. So beginning in July of 2004, I woke up each day with the focus on giving.

When I began the exercise, I was not expecting it to last one hundred days and it was not until I surpassed the fortieth day that I realized that I could continue for another sixty. No, when I began, I just thought I would try it for a day, and then another day, and then another day, until forty days had passed and I not only liked the sound of  “one hundred days of giving”, but I had also grown rather attached to the exercise. Without jumping ahead of myself too much, I will share here that when I ended the exercise at one hundred days I suffered quite a bit of giving withdrawal...more on that later...

So July 2004 is when the exercise began and while I jotted down notes in my journal, with feelings, observations, estimated value of the gift and any unusual occurrences, I did not sit down to actually write the journal that you are all reading until 2008. In hindsight, I understand the reasons for the delay in writing and will share some of those toward the end of the journal, but the fact that I did not write the journal in a finished product really bothered me for sometime. And the fact that I did not publish the journal until four more years later really really bothered me - until Cathy said, “one hundred days is a long time to do anything.”

When I heard her say that I realized that I had actually engaged in three separate exercises that spanned one hundred days - the original one hundred days giving exercise, the next one hundred days of writing, and then the third one hundred days of publishing the work. Whew! Clarity for me!

So what you are reading actually occurred in 2004, thus the stories about the Austin floods, what you are reading was actually written in 2008, and the work that is being published on this blog has fresh annotations, updates and author’s notes that are informed by current events. To add to these layers, during the process of publishing the journal, I have begun a second cycle of one hundred days of giving and am using the same process - using the journal, which is posted on the tab titled journal here, to keep notes and I will write about it at a later date. So there is much more to come and I can’t wait to begin that next chapter. However, prior to the “next cycle of one hundred days of giving” being written, I am planning on self-publishing the first exercise in paperback complete with a daily journal after each daily post for the reader to complete - so stay tuned.

I do hope this helps you to understand the time line of events related to these posts. I have so enjoyed all of the phases of the project and I especially enjoy the feedback that all of you have been giving me about your own experiences of giving. Keep it up, I know first hand what an impact this kind of experience can have and I am happy to share that with all of you. And, thank you Cathy for your gift of asking the right question.

❦ When you need clarity, just ask the question.