A wizard always arrives precisely when he means to. . .

The motto of Liverpool, an English club soccer team, is “You’ll never walk alone.”

It’s a good thought in terms of fostering team unity, but it strikes me as something even truer. The dark periods in life of stress, despair, anxiety and frustration are usually, in my experience, dispelled by the right person intervening at just the right time. Timing is everything. This is why we call our friends in the middle of the night struck by insomnia: because we know they’ll answer the phone. For this same reason, we reach out when we know someone who has been where we are. By their very existence, we know that our current situation is neither permanent nor world ending.

As I walked in the door of my apartment two days ago, my Christmas present from friends in England was sitting on the couch. I was pretty sure what it was -- I love my friend but she’s less than stellar at keeping secrets (well, unimportant ones anyway). But the fact of the matter was that right in front of me, at a time when I’d been needing it the most, was a tangible symbol that someone who cared about me was thinking of me.Experiences like this constantly reassure me that I’m never really alone.

Right now, another close friend is in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, doing geographic research with an indigenous tribe called the Maijuna. This will be the first time in seven years of friendship that we’ve gone more than a week or two without any kind of contact, even if that was just phone tag. But I couldn’t be happier for him, and his Bonsai tree is sitting on my nightstand, keeping me company until he comes back for it. And I know he will; no question about it. It’s just how we are. Gone and then back.

My yoga teacher this morning said that its important to pay attention to both sides of the body, because as we engage one, the other relaxes and stretches. If we never allowed the opposing side a chance to rest, the whole body would come out of balance. Relationships, she said are like this as well. Sometimes we are the strength our friends need to soften into; other times they provide the pillar that we lean on. Both roles are necessary, and neither exists without the other.

So as I know, I encountered a setback and failed to meet my first week’s deadline. However, looking back upon this day and this past week, I realized that until right now, everything I needed to come together wasn’t quite there. So now then, is exactly when I should be doing this.

Perfect timing.

4 Weeks. 4 Blogs. And go.

This personal bet was born of a few things:

1. I haven't written a new post in awhile and I've been meaning to.
2. For me, writing is a form of meditation, which I think I'll be able to do better than regular meditation because as much as I'd like to (and I do realize that this is the point) I don't have enough time in the day to sit still for any significant period.
3. Besides hopefully learning some amount of focus, forcing myself to write may actually mean that I put into words the things that are running around in my head, some of which may be worth remembering.

So here are the terms:

I will post one blog per week for the next month. There could be more than one (don't hold your breath) but at the minimum there will be a new post each seven-day period. The week will run from Monday morning to Sunday night, and posts may come any time within that particular week. Week one begins tomorrow, January 14th. Week four ends Sunday February 10th. There will be no cop-out posts containing lame excuses such as "I had nothing interesting to say this week." There is always something interesting and/or important to say. The challenge of a good and disciplined writer is to draw from his or her experiences regularly, not simply when the mood strikes.

Best of luck to me. I will endeavor to come up with something worth your valuable time.