A hike towards your mountain

Imagine where you want to be in life as a mountain. The mountain might be distant, but you'll always see it. As long as you are walking toward that mountain, you'll be alright. And whenever you find yourself doing something you're unsure of if it's the right thing to do, you can ask yourself if it moves you towards that mountain or away from it.

Taking this metaphor further, I see myself sitting in a hostel in some remote forest. It's a cloudy but dry day in early autumn. I'm sitting in the dining area, drinking a hot chocolate. If I look out of the window next to me, I can see the mountain looming in the distance. In front of me I spread out a map of the forest. There are a few routes I could take. Each of them requires a daylong hike to only just reach the next hostel. But I'm carrying some gear with me, which is slowing me down significantly. This leaves me with two options. Either I can leave my gear behind and walk faster, or I can spend one night in the forest and get really uncomfortable. I already know that I won't leave my gear behind. But instead of getting up, I'm sitting in this hostel in the middle of nowhere, drinking my hot chocolate with Bailey's, more of it each day. Until it's no longer hot chocolate.

In this metaphor, the hiking gear is my 100 day project. It's a creative process that worked great, and has served its purpose. It's a severe time constraint that I currently struggle to make work. But I'm not yet ready to leave it behind. Writing about how it doesn't serve me anymore feels like stalling. Because I know what I want to write about. But doing so, especially publically, will be discomforting.

I still want to write fiction. The last experiment I did failed miserably. I constructed a plot that didn't work about a character I didn't find interesting. I could come up with a character again, someone I find interesting this time. Then, I can just start to write about him, and his journey. Basically, I could try the same project again, with a few tweaked parameters. This feels disheartening, especially after how I built up the last story in my mind. But I know that all I need is to get up and try again. And this is a good start as any.

The 100 day project was inspired by listening to a podcast. It also mentioned some journal prompts. One of them was to "write about a day in the life of your dreams". I still haven't done this. Because everything I currently write I'm also publishing. And I don't want to write about my dreams in public. It will bring up some deeply uncomfortable topics. I know I have to confront them at some point. I just don't want to start doing it publically. But given the constraints I have put onto myself, this may be the best way forward.