START

Last night, was incredible.


For those of you that know me, you probably know I'm a big fan of a select few Christian blogs. One in particular called Stuff Christians Like, is a satirical blog written by a guy named Jon Acuff. Now, I have followed SCL for probably the last 3 or 4 years. It's one of the first things I read every morning. There's humor, there's insight, there's relevance and it's written so well. Jon has also written a few books, I've read two of those books. One was called... not surprisingly... "Stuff Christians Like". The other, was called Quitter. I read Quitter while I was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was exactly what I needed while on that trip. Jon's writing, his story of how he got to where he is, is one of the big reasons I have continually worked on writing this blog, and preparing the ideas for a book that I will write one day. Jon has helped me to realize that if I want to write, I just need to do it on a regular basis.

#StartNight

A couple of months ago I heard Jon was releasing a new book called Start. Then, I found out he was going to be holding an event in Franklin, TN called #StartNight. Basically, Dave Ramsey (who Jon works for) told Jon to plan his dream event... and #StartNight was born. Now, most of you know, I am a professional procrastinator. So naturally, when tickets went on sale for #StartNight, I waited until the last possible second to buy one... and wouldn't you know... they were sold out. I was distraught. However, an idea was formed in that moment... Jon loves Twitter, why not use Twitter to get his attention and get a ticket. I started a campaign, and asked everyone that follows me to retweet the following post "I'm starting a personal campaign to get a ticket to @jonacuff event #StartNight please retweet to get his attention"

And it worked.

Within about an hour Jon had messaged me and said his team was working on it. By the next day, someone from Dave Ramsey's office called me and said they had a ticket. I was in. I was so excited to have the opportunity to hear from Jon live, but I had no idea what it was going to be like. Even if I would have had expectations, they would have been completely surpassed. Last night, I drove 4 1/2 hours to Franklin, TN to attend #StartNight. It was amazing, there's no other way to describe it. Jon outlined all these ways to "Punch Fear in the Face", talked about the path we should travel on to get to "awesome" instead of walking the straight line to "average". It definitely got me thinking about what's next and helped me realize I have to START walking towards my dreams now, not once the ending is clear and concrete. You might be wondering what that looks like... well....

It Starts Now.

That's right, it starts now. The first thing I'm going to do is start taking steps to achieve my dreams of becoming a published author. I got some advice from a guy a few months back that published his first book. He said the best way to start writing a book, is to write 600 words every day. Regardless of whether they are complete crap, you never post them, etc... still write 600 words every day. So that's where I start. It starts today. Every day, from here on out, I'm going to write 600 words a day about something. I have no idea what that will look like, but God will control the path, I just have to start down it. I would love to tell you more about the book and the message behind it, but I'm not sure where it's going at this point. I just know that I can no longer use the excuse, "When God wants me to start it, I will start it"... no, God is not the one that is impeding the progress on my dreams, I am.

What about you?

What's your dream? How can you start walking towards achieving that dream right now? If you want to talk about it, hit me up. I'd love to hear about your dream, I'd love to help you start working towards it if I can. Most importantly, I'd love to pray for you. We can't achieve our dreams alone, we need each other.

It's time to START.

P.s. For those of you wondering, this blog post is 768 words long ;)

Grace and Peace