You started in April. A business, a book, the plan for what comes next. Quietly, because that’s how these things usually begin. You didn’t announce it. You’d see how it went first, and then say something once there was something to say.
You started in April. It’s September.
Try to find the day you stopped. No, really, go looking for it. See, that’s the part that’s always hard to pin down, because there is no day. There is no moment where you called it, where you considered it, where you said, today, I stop.
People carry things around for years that they should have set down and felt fine about. But that’s not what this is. This was not a decision. It was just a state you drifted into, and states don’t ask anything of you. They just are. And this could still be true next April.
Most things that matter don’t move in a straight line. Somewhere between April and now, the plan stopped matching the situation you’re actually in.
Sometimes what helps is small. You say what you’re working on out loud, in a room where that’s what people do, and later, someone asks how it’s going.
That’s the whole thing.
You may never have said it out loud, so there’s nothing for the people in your life to ask about. The ones who remember don’t want to seem like they’ve been keeping score, or like they noticed you’d gone quiet.
Everyone is being reasonable. And the thing still sits there untouched.
Meanwhile, you can’t see it either. From the inside, standing still and moving slowly can feel the same when there’s nothing to measure against. If someone asked, you’d probably say you’re still doing it, and you’d mean it. There’s just no clear moment that tells you how long you’ve been in one spot.
Being asked just brings the thing back into the room. You say it out loud, in a sentence, with someone listening. And now you’re choosing for the first time since April.
You can say you’re still in this, or you can say you’re done. Either one is a decision. Both of them are yours to make.
That’s one of the things that changes when you don’t do it alone. You choose.
This is what we do at Cup of Accountabili’Tea. Someone says what they’re working on, and later, someone asks.
If you’ve been doing this on your own, there’s a short quiz about going it alone, and if you’d like someone to ask you about it later, that’s what we’re here for.
Lisa