183 Questions

"Rehumanizing", "Writers Not-So-Anonymous", "Explosions of Nothing", "Salem Door", "Get Me In Jail", "The VeeBJamN Network". These are the names of just a few of my many projects that I began with great intentions for the future but left stranded on the side of the road.

I'm not the most reliable person, if you haven't noticed. I'm notoriously late for things. I start projects and never finish them. I forget to respond to people's texts.

There are some things that I have done a magnificent job of completing. Almost all of my school work was done by the day it was due. I may have left it until the night before to finish it, but it was turned in on time. For months, I posted almost every day on this very blog. For years I watched every episode of LOST when it came on TV. I've been questioning lately what the difference is between the things that are safe to leave in my hands and the things that aren't, and there is one major difference: consequences.

I am a very poor self-motivator. If the only consequences are that I didn't achieve my own goal, who cares? If the penalty for being late to work is that I missed ten minutes of sitting and doing nothing in a building by myself, why should I show up on time? If no one is reading my blog when I post it, who will notice if I don't post it?

I need consequences. In school, if your assignment wasn't in on time, at the very least you lost a chunk of points on it. When I first started this blog, I knew of several people who read every time I posted. If I missed an episode of LOST (back when it was first coming on), I wouldn't get to watch it until a week later after the next episode came on.

I think this is part of why so many of my projects have been left unfinished. If I don't finish them, who will notice? Who will care? I certainly won't. Most of the time, once I'm halfway through a project, my brain has already finished it and moved on to the next. There's no reason for me to finish it on my end. The only reason to finish it would be if someone else cared. This is unfortunate, because when I look back, all I can see is the long trail of half-finished ideas I've used to mark my path.

I don't like this about myself. My unreliability is at the top of the list of things I don't like about me, and I want desperately to cross it off. One of my biggest problems at this point is that I remain unconvinced that it's even possible for me to finish something without someone looking over my shoulder. With that in mind, I am going to try to prove myself wrong.

For one year, come Hell or high water, I will post one story (or piece of a story) every two days (one to write, one to edit) with a minimum length of 500 words.

A second issue: I've always had a hard time taking credit for my writing. I think this is part of why I created my pseudonym. Two reasons:

1. Stories have always come to me so readily and so naturally that I don't feel like a wrote them so much as they presented themselves to me.
2. I'm terrified of rejection.

For a longer explanation of the first reason, please see the page About B.C. Friday. I don't disagree with this reasoning behind the use of a pseudonym, but I'm afraid that reason #2 is a more accurate depiction of my continued use of "B.C. Friday". I need, if only for a time, to take ownership of my work. I need to put my name on it, put it out there, and accept what comes of that.

With that in mind, these 183 stories that I will write over the course of a year will all be written under my name. The name "Benjamin Freitag" will be prominently displayed on the site. I need to prove to myself that I really do have something to do with it and am not just a vessel.

This is going to be an incredibly difficult project for me. It is going to test my commitment, my resolve, and my ability to self-motivate. I don't want to rely on someone else to push me into doing this. This is for me.

There is something that I could use from you, however. I am going to be looking for prompts. What I want from you is questions. They can be personal questions about me, factual questions about the world, or anything else you can think of. It just doesn't matter. (BTW I love "What if" questions!) Hopefully, I will be able to pull together 183 questions and answer them in the form of a story. You can send them to me in many forms. You can message me on Facebook, email them to veebjamn@live.com with the subject line "183 Questions", tweet me on Twitter (I'm bad with this site's jargon) @VeeBJamN using #183questions, or you can tell me in person. Hopefully, once I get the site up and running, you will be able to send in questions there as well.

Due to the nature of this endeavor and the fact that it doesn't really jive with the tone of this blog (or any of the other half-dozen I've set up and abandoned), I will be starting it somewhere new. I don't know where yet. I'm going to be doing some research on that, and I will get back to you. As soon as I've made a decision, I will put an update on this post as well as a link at the top of this blog so you can start watching for the stories to come.

Look for the stories to start coming March 1st, but you can ask questions anytime from now until I'm done with the project in March 2016. (That sounds like such a long way away.)

So here's my question for you today: What are the things you would like to change about yourself and how can you start working to change those things?



Update (2/26/15): The project has a home! Head on over to 183questions.wordpress.com and start asking questions! First story will be up March 1st.