I’m not sure there will be a post this week… I mean, outside of this detailed mess explaining why there won’t be a post this week.

This isn’t because there isn’t anything to write about. Quite the opposite, actually; There’s so much and most of it hasn’t been processed in my own head. I’ve spent more time than I could tell you starting and starting over and starting over again and again. If it were an old movie, there would be a wastecan in the corner overflowing with crumpled papers thrown across the room to illustrate frustration and defeat.

I’m not too frustrated and not at all defeated, though. This is all part of the experience, and one I kind of like. Sure, it’s cool to post and to see who reads or watches and if you liked it or if you didn’t, if it forced questions and examination, sparked a train of thought to move through previously untouched areas. The birth of our work, when it’s finished and available for…whatever it will be…is fun and exciting. When I wrote my book, I loved holding it, sharing it with you and giving it space to breathe.

But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was the planning, outlining, thinking, meditating, agonizing; the best part was actually writing. The best part was the creation itself.

If our only joy is in the product… Well, the product is only such a small part of the work. And then what? What if no one “likes” our posts? What if no one reads them? What if I still have boxes of books left over? If I write and no one is there to read it, what was the point at all? What is success? How much is enough? Does everyone have to think it’s awesome (and the obvious implication is that then everyone thinks I am awesome) or be moved or have some sort of reaction? If we give a gift and there’s no “thank you” or acknowledgment at all, then what? Is the gift wasted? Meaningless?

It’s like an iceberg – the product is only the very tippy top. The hours and hours and sweat and tears and heartache are the rest.

If you coach a team, there’s all of the many hours of practice, building relationships with while teaching the players. The games are such a small part, they can seem almost irrelevant. Yet it’s too often the only tool we use to evaluate a season.

I have lots to say and no idea how to say it. This chaos will separate, crystallize, (it always does), and come to you in the next several weeks. For today, I’m sitting in it, watching it swirl and listening to the clanging noise that signifies something valuable.

I’m just not sure what it is yet.

But there is the truth that is in this room, standing by the window begging to be noticed. It’s the chaos, asking us to engage, inviting us to wrestle and stretch the boundaries of who and what we are, that is the purpose. If we miss the moments of the journey, focusing only on the product, we’ve completely missed the lesson. Our output will be largely superficial and hollow, never having been lived in or allowed to transform us. We trade the process for the end, and when we do that, the end is never going to be enough (there are never enough likes or shares or views or zeroes on a paycheck), we are never going to be enough, the noise will never stop and we will never rest.

I was 100% wrong earlier, the birth isn’t the finished product, it’s us, it’s our lives, and it’s a really big deal that we not miss them.