Cutting Red Tape: a Pinterest Inspiration Story

 
 
This morning I was up early, excited to finally be skiing this new snow (yeah, I'm like a kid on Christmas) when I decided 6:30 am was much to early, even for first chair, to get out of bed on a Saturday. While still tucked in my cozy sleeping bag, I grabbed my phone and decided to check out the Pinterest corner of the internet. Now, I'm not a Pinterest addict- I just got back into it and maybe visit once a week- but it seemed like a brainless pre-dawn activity.

Once on the site, I came across pictures of ice climbing (pinned), cabins (pinned), and a very cute miniature owl (nope). I soon grew tired of pinning on my phone, which is cumbersome & doesn't pin where I like (first-world pain), so I decided to check out the activity on my profile. One new follower stood out to me. It could be that he was surrounded by a white landscape. It might have been the snowboard strapped to his back. It most likely was that I recognized him as a Twitter friend, @StephenWilli.

Reaching his page, I noticed the categories of mountains (followed) & photography (followed). The thing that caught my eye was not in either of these categories, however. On his typography board I found the source if this post's inspiration. His pin (Pinterest's equivalent to a blog post) captured the essence of a major theme of my life lately.

”We have a strategic plan,” the pin read. ”It's called doing things.”

This was brilliant. It poked fun at the corporate belief in structured everything, doing things by the rules, creating red tape, and making sure everything was in place before taking action on an idea. This made me happy.

This pin made me think of my life lately. I have made a lot of big decisions over the past year- life changing decisions, in my book. I've decided to start a new business, left a comfortable city apartment to live in a car and pursue that dream, and a couple of months after my return, decided to leave Utah for the unknown once again, to further the pursuit.

In all of this, there hasn't been much downtime. The activity of capturing a life dream has kept me fully engaged. That's the point: I'm doing things. Every step may not always be correct or bring me closer to my goal, but the overall progress is evident. It's a learning process. If I didn't just do things, I'd be back where I was, over a year and a half ago, sitting on my couch, dreaming of taking a six month climbing trip in my car. Instead, I've done it.

Stop thinking and get to it. Your plan will work itself out a you go along; it's not necessary to know every detail before you jump in. To use an old cliche: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Just dive in, get to it, and live your dream.

PS - here's the cute owl. I know you really wanted to see it. 

From a tumblr blog