Valerie Roney

Wow.

Well yesterday was a big deal. Broke 10,000 views on my website last night. Still trying to settle after all that excitement. Not only is 10,000 just a big number (it’s frickin’ HUGE!!!) but it’s special too.

In Chinese culture 10,000 is a myriad, and has connotations of infinite and powerful. If you can get 10,000 of something together, you’ve really GOT something! Even Malcolm Gladwell thinks getting ten thousand hours of practice at anything is a life changing number.

It’s the numeric value for synergy – a point of critical mass. The tipping point when everything gathered comes together and becomes something new. I have a hard time talking about what that might be in my case, because I don’t know – but it’s definitely a Wahoo!OhshitOhshitOhshit! moment. I think I’m speaking rather serenely about it right now, mostly ’cause I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet, or what it really means. But it’s a Really Big Deal, that much I know. And a bit of a shock after all my frustrations and stuckitudeness of the last week.

Wow.

100 days… I’ve grown rather fond of 100 day projects: I’ve done this meditation/writing thing before, I’ve done 100 days of poems, even 100 days of tweeting haiku. They’ve all been different experiences, and often connected me to people in new ways, and they’ve all changed something for me.

When I was hard-core into Tai Chi, we would go to workshops, learn something cool, but always be instructed to practice it for 100 days before teaching it to others. Good rule. I’m sure there’s some good neuro-biology theories (I’m talking totally off the cuff here, if anybody wants to add a valid link to such, please do!) about how long it takes to map new neurons, how much repetition to get something built into your wiring. Certainly anything you do every day for several months is long enough to break a habit, create a new one, get some momentum in a new life.

Master Moy (the founder of the Taoist Tai Chi Society) was big on practicing 100 times. And dreamed of getting 10,000 people together to do Tai Chi. He knew there would be something remarkable and transformative (if inexplicable) that would happen when it did.

10,000 views. So many people coming together at my website, to read, to laugh, to share, to explore, to risk, to grow. That’s a very powerful thing. Wow. That’s a really powerful thing. Yep, it’s sinking in a wee bit now. I am unspeakably grateful for what all of you have created here. I adore this website and the conversations we have on it. And that is all because of what you’ve brought to it. I could not have done it alone.

100 days, 10,000 views. All coming crashing together. My life is full of ones and zeros, and they’re adding up to some Really Big Things.

Oh, and, well over 300 comments on my website since it started less than 2 years ago. That’s a pretty big number too!

And if you haven’t seen the post, be sure to get the info on the 10,000 views party and come join the celebration!