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Wow!!!  It feels a little like I'm blowing the dust off this place and taking my plastic coverings off the furniture, but it is good to be home!

Let's jump in.

For anyone who is new, SpireSpire follows participants who have committed to a year-long process of achieving a scary, life-changing goal.  We get to watch the drama and struggle, they get accountability and strength to push through an achieve what they really want to do.

At the end of SpireSpire round ONE I said that I wasn't planning on doing a round two.  I'll admit it.  I was tired partially from writing a book and running Spire (and maybe a lot from being pregnant...as I STILL AM, good lord, how long does it take to incubate a human??) But I had these people with awesome dreams and goals that kept cropping up.  And who kept asking about Round 2.

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought about how much love I had for the SpireSpire project!  And how much of a difference it had made for people.  Yes, not everyone finished the year.  I didn't even achieve my being famous goal!  (What the heck.) but a book was written (and because of that book, I've been able to help other authors begin to write their books.)  And a musical was produced (and because of that musical, two wells were dug and two villages have water, and projects in turn were inspired by that musical.)  Music was created (which created a band, which is helping to breathe life into the music scene at a college campus), French was learned (which lead to a switch in majors, which is leading to a new fabulous woman in the field of linguistics.)  There are still ripples coming off of the first round of SpireSpire that I'm even having a hard time believing.

So what now?  I'm looking for participants, people who have large goals to achieve and need some accountability to achieve them.  In the past we've had a producer trying to find a way to to block, direct and produce a musical in 24 hrs., weight loss, language learning, an amateur writer looking to complete her first book, musicians creating music, artists creating shows, comedians looking to break into the movie business.  Did they all pan out?  Not everybody made it all the way through.  Life happens.  This is a big commitment and people make goals and don't keep them every day.  But you could.  It's possible.

Here's the basics:

You need to be able to write coherent sentences.  You're going to be blogging about your experiences of trying to achieve your goal once a week, so you need to be okay being introspective and honest while you're writing about how you're doing.

You need to have a large goal:  Here's what typical seems to succeed--choose something significant to you.  There's goals that are cool (like I would love to have my black belt) and then there are goals that bring me more in line with who I want to be as a person. (A storyteller.)  For me, a black belt would be a nice notch on my belt, but I'm not especially hard-wired as an athlete.  It's cool, but not integral to who I am as a person.  So your goal should be somewhere along the lines of "this is who I was meant to be."  Your goal should stretch your limits, but also be attainable.  My idea of writing a bestseller was not attainable (it required WAY too many steps that I wasn't in control of, AND merrily skipped over the fact that I had never finished a book EVER) while finishing my manuscript was.  Lastly, it should be measurable.  We should know in the end if you've achieved it, or not.  I'm pretty good at helping people figure this out, so if you have a basic idea, we can refine it together.

You need to be brave:  We'll be putting together plans and challenging each other to push our boundaries, step out of our comfort zone, get yourself out there and get it done.  Gotta have balls, otherwise you'll get bored and stuck.  Can you be creative when things don't go right?  The first scary step is right here:  Email me at {shay@spirespire.com} and put Round Two in the subject line.  At least, start the conversation even if you don't feel like you've got all your ducks in a row.  Part of my job is to listen and see if we can figure it out.  It might sound silly, but sending that one email may be what you really need to do right now.  

SO.  Think about it.  Start dreaming.  We're aiming for a launch date of February 15th or March 1st depending on participant schedules.  OR! Spread this post around, especially if you can think of a friend/sibling/mom/grandpa who would be perfect for something like this.  We're shooting for somewhere between 6 to 12 participants!

Do it!