The BRIGHT SPOT Awards: Q1 in Review

Yesterday a spring storm arrived.

 

The sodden snow lay heavily across thin branches, causing them to splinter and crack, exposing their buff-colored interiors. 

 
So could have gone my little project, had I let the weight of my intentions and expectations bow its limbs to the ground until they snapped.
 
The original premise:
“For 100 days, if a stranger did anything (directly or indirectly) that made me smile I would give them a little handwritten note thanking them for being a bright spot in my day."

It seemed like I was always interacting with people that way. Surely there would be ample opportunities to give out awards. Piece of cake. Right?

It turns out that when you work from home -- as I had done for 14 years -- you make your own schedule. You can do stuff like take walks in the middle of the day or run errands whenever you please. Conversely, when you sign up for two temp gigs (and one of them is with an accountant during tax season), daylight hours and energy become precious and finite resources.

Time to question and/or bend the rules.

Does it have to be a person?
Does it have to be a stranger?
Does it count if I've gone on an errand to the grocery store in the hope of having a situation arise that warrants the giving of an award?
Does it have to be every single day? 

My workarounds to initial challenges felt like exercises in creativity (why not a ceramic bird? why not a coffee shop?) and perseverance (i have to keep going. there are lots of people who hold down full time jobs while writing their novels or taking their photographs or practicing their art. if they can do it, so can i). 

Then one night I was flinging the front door open to scurry out into the dark when Isaac asked, "Are you going to look for a stranger?" 

He must have heard me say "I have to go out and find a stranger!" a handful of times by now. 

Humor from the seedier interpretations of the phrase aside, I found it sad. 

Absent of spontaneity and joy, the project was reduced to a chore, one at which I felt I was failing.

Talking with Jana and Cecilia (my fellow Women on the Rise) helped me to accept this idea:

A change in scope that reignites the spark of the challenge beats the hell out of a relentlessly dull march through the original plan.

I gave out the rest of the 25 awards on my own schedule. I used the remainder of the month to catch up on my blog posts. I also redesigned the awards themselves to include pre-printed verbiage on the inside:
“This year I’m giving out 100 BRIGHT SPOT Awards whenever a person makes my day a little sunnier. Today, that person is you!"

 
Hopefully, time begets more time.
Perhaps giving myself the year to finish the challenge will let me be in the world again and opportunities for connection can come to me instead of me having to chase them down.

 
Onward and upward.