40G Reason No. 7: Yoda was a punk

Yoda.  Everyone's favorite Jedi Master.  And, in my book at least, the source of some of the best movie fight scenes ever, world without end, forever and ever, amen.  And remember he does all that fighting with only three digits on his hands and feet AND some other guy's hand jammed up his butt.  Four out of five dentists agree, when it comes to tearing it up against the Dark Side, Yoda just can't be beat.  Except I guess he was ...

Anyhow, Yoda's probably most famous for his quote, "Do or do not.  There is no try."  Unfortunately, like a lot of boys growing up in the US, I internalized Yoda's oversimplified outlook on life, as well as a lot of other similar cultural messages from actual people, that promoted a narrow binary, on/off,  yes/no, fail/succeed. happy/sad, kill or be killed perspective that is elegantly summarized by this image.  As far as I'm concerned, that's just not a good way to be.  In Joaquin World, it's not "do or do not," it's "trial and error."  And sometimes a whole lot of trials and a whole lot of errors before something that feels like progress is made.  Failure IS always an option.  And, for me at least, recognizing and appreciating the possibility of failure makes it easier to make plans and strategize to minimize the chances of it happening.  But while that seems pretty obvious right now as I'm writing, it's not always so easy to make it a reality in my non-blogging life.  Which is where the $40G comes in.

Frankly, every time I give myself some time to think about it, raising $40G in a year seems totally impossible.  Check it out: so far I've raised over twelve times more than the minimum required to ride in the 2011 NCAC. That's more than three times as much money as I've ever raised in my life and it's the most money raised by a single person in the history of the event.  And yet I'm not even halfway there.  And I feel like I'm running out of ideas, energy, and the goodwill of others.  After a few more turns down this mental death spiral I get to: I'LL NEVER MAKE IT!  GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As sadomasochistic as it may sound, getting myself stirred up into such a frenzy like that every few days is kind of the point of this $40G thing.  One of at least 40, anyway.  Because every time that happens I get to also practice thinking stuff like: "That's 100% true, dude.  You might not make it to $40G.  But that's just fine.  You can quit at any time and, while it'll be a little embarrassing, it won't really be a problem in the grand scheme of things.  And you will still have raised an F-load of cash for a great cause."  And that gives me great comfort.  In fact, by my last count, I've quit trying to raise $40G at least five times already.  But, so far at least, it didn't take long for me to decide to un-quit and keep on trying, coming up with new ideas, contacting donors, yadda yadda yadda.  And, oddly enough, giving my self permission to quit, and even quitting for awhile, is making it easier and easier to stick with it.

My hope is that having so many opportunities to practice turning "Do or do not" into "Try, err sometimes, then try again" in this $40G microcosm will translate into making it easier to practice that same mental flip in all the other areas of my life.