Writer's block, an owner's guide: The last minute, and more

A friend and I recently launched a therapy group. I won’t go into details of that. The story I want to share is that by the scheduled start date, we had no new members signed up at all, so we did not hold the first meeting and we both got on with our lives. Goodness knows I was busy enough with other things and didn’t mind too much.

During week two, people began to call about joining the group. We decided to enroll them. Seven days late, we held our first meeting with the membership more than half full.

Enrollment continued and by the second meeting the room was full.

My personal guess now is that calls will continue and we may find ourselves having to open a waiting list for a second group. But as for that, we’ll just see.

Anyway: I’ve been involved in groups for the last five years, but usually they’ve been ongoing groups where members come and go all the time. The exceptions have been in prison situations where people had limited choice about whether to join. So I didn’t have experience of how you set up a new one.

And I’m thinking: you know, this is one way people make decisions. It’s possible to put a thing off until it’s almost too late, and then attempt it. And that way it feels like you’re leaving it up to God / the Universe whether the thing happens or not.

Kinda like the way I’m deciding whether or not to take part in NaNoWriMo.

This post is not about the behavior of any individual I might or might not have met recently. I’m aware that most of the group members hadn’t even heard about us by the original deadline. This post is just about a thought I had about life in general.

Responses to this article (3 responses)

Published on November 1, 2006 at 11:52 pm. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/the-last-minute-and-more.html

3 Comments

Decision by indecision. One of my favorites – only slightly better than throwing darts at a wall covered in Post-It Notes, and only because it involves even less thought. I guess you won’t be doing NaBloPoMo – I don’t see an entry for November 2.

Now, back to work. I have a novel to write.

Comment by hollyjahangiri — November 3, 2006 @ 12:39 pm
But it’s there, and with a genuine datestamp. I did decide to take part in NaBloPoMo – easy enough to do and offers various advantages – but I applied late and have heard nothing back. Doesn’t matter, here I am doing it.

Comment by David Jung McGarva — November 3, 2006 @ 12:56 pm
I see it now! Don’t forget, you have to make them public so everyone else can see them – or they might as well be “all in your head.”

I’ll vouch for you, though – if vouching’s needed. Last I saw, she had over 400 URLs to enter. I don’t think it’s “too late” until the end of the month (kind of like NaNoWriMo).

Comment by hollyjahangiri — November 3, 2006 @ 2:26 pm

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