Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Ralph Waldo Emerson Trust Challenge: Surprise Yourself.

This straightforward prompt from the Trust 30 challenge is by Ashley Ambridge. I am charged to recall a time when I did something I didn't believe I was capable of doing but surprised myself. That was then.  What about this week?

Since this is Wedding Anniversary week at home, I recall courting my wife for our first date. This was in ancient times when folks still had voicemail on their pagers. (Pager? What's a pager? There's voicemail on those big coaster size things at the restaurant?) We had just set our first date. I composed a poem and read the poem into her voicemail. As a single person lacking 2nd dates, reading a poem into voicemail prior to a 1st date was out of character for me. Further, those ancient pager-voicemail thingees had a time limit on messages. I got timed out as I started the final stanza and had to call back to complete my poetry slam offering. Obviously, everything worked out well as evidenced by my introductory sentence including "Wedding Anniversary week".

How can I use this to surprise myself this week? Well, if it's planned, it's not really a surprise. But, if it's not planned how can it be executed? So it's now a challenge. I will challenge myself to find 3 new venues to troll for blog traffic, using my personality (my poetry is reserved for my wife) to announce I'm a player.

How will you use past self-surprises to challenge yourself to push your limits?

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