Good morning crickets. Welcome to day number two-hundred-twenty-six of Operation Achieve Anything. It's amazing how quickly following a confidence boost, the world has a way of putting me back in my place only with a touch more doubt than before. As I just started to point out on Friday, the traffic to my site has been growing to the point where it's tripled over the past couple of months. At first, I just kept this to myself thinking the boost was some kind of anomaly that would go away if I made mention of it.

"Oh, you're just being paranoid," I tried to reassure myself just before I decided to share, what I thought was, an accomplishment since it encouraged the optimism that inspired the answer to one of my Achieve Anything... book assignments. Without missing a beat, from the time that I bragged about the traffic boost and how it created happy thoughts for the future, the numbers went on a steady incline to where the last couple of days, I'm barely above the pre-boost days.

To make things feel worse, this happened during the same exact time that this confidence boost inspired me to reach out to others for interaction, only to be shut down. I guess that's what I get for going against my plan to just do what I do and make it available and hope for the best while keeping to myself. It just seems so much easier this way, especially since my obsession to work on personal projects is more of a curse than a career path.

Oh well, I'm over being down over the situation, but I'd be lying if I tried to claim that there was no disappointment at all. With that said, let's get on to the tasks for today. First off, for yesterday, I was supposed to try to teach someone something new and share how I feel about the process.

In general, I'm horrible when it comes to teaching adults because I have such a low self-esteem that I find it hard to grasp how anyone can't figure out what I've been able to work through in my idiotic head. It also doesn't help that the area of my head that holds the more detailed information uses a form of shorthand that that translates well to my inner thoughts but I struggle to articulate how to express anything intellectual to the world since I second guess my every word while speaking.

That said, I feel like I'm pretty good when it comes to teaching kids especially when it comes to teaching them things that they want to do, as opposed to most adults who are either learning because they have to or there attempting to learn to be better than you if you share an area of interest. Where these adults either don't listen or think they already know a better way, I often notice that kids react with wonder.

Take for example, when I show my nephew a cheesy uncle-style magic trick, usually only good enough to trick dogs, he reacts with suck excitement that sometimes I think that he's playing a prank on me. Like while in the pool and I do that thing where I drop a pool toy behind my back at the same time I'm faking a throw. he fell for it every time while I watch dumbfounded that he wasn't catching on, but that's just using the head of a jaded adult.

At first, I wanted to be a proper magician and keep the trick to myself but, with it barely being magic, I figured I'd do the uncle thing and share. He gets so excited when I teach him things like this that it makes me a bit excited myself, especially as he goes on to run around saying, "Look what Uncle Matt just taught me." This reaction kind of bums me out that I landed on a life pather where I will probably never have a kid of my own.

Sorry to end on a sad note, but that's where the assignment led. As for today's task, the book is now focused on the creative process moving past the point of just thinking up ideas. It talks about how you have to start with an idea, then add more ideas, then organize those ideas before you come up with a plan, and the final step is to then implement this plan and that's how the book claims we create.

I'm not sure if I fully agree but it is a pretty good oversimplified breakdown. I'm also not fully sure if I know what the actual task is because the lesson spent more time explaining the process and not much time on what it wanted from me. I'll have to reread it later and will share my results when I check in with tomorrow's update. Until then, it's now time to sign off by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.