There was no power when I got to work this morning. It's not surprising considering the storms we had last night. The drive to work was littered with fallen branches and debris. The truck mechanic next door had his ginormous roller door blown in! I feel grateful that a power cut is the only consequence from the night's weather (oh, and Frank has no school because there is no power!). It goes to show that sometimes it doesn’t matter what you have planned for the day, the universe has other ideas.

This week I’ve been grappling with what to do about this blog! As I edge towards 100 editions I’m starting to wonder what's the point? Why am I doing this? Does it matter? Is it a waste of time or has it just transformed into something I don’t recognize? I was thinking this outloud to Matt and he mentioned the Sunk Cost Fallacy, which I had never heard of before.

Sunk Cost Fallacy is an economic idea. The term sunk cost refers to resources already invested into a project (time + money). The Sunk Cost Fallacy occurs when that investment continues to propel the project forward, even if it’s obvious the project is going to fail. Economists consider this as ‘irrational’ and would describe it as ‘throwing good money after bad’.

The most famous example of this was when the British and French government continued to sink billions into the Concorde Supersonic Airplane, long after there was no longer an economic case for the aircraft. Britain refers to this as one of its greatest economic disasters and the term ‘Concorde fallacy’ is often interchanged with ‘Sunk Cost fallacy’.

When I was reading the definition and examples of this fallacy I felt as if a part of my personality had just been identified. I’m notorious for keeping the ‘project’ going because of the time (or money) I’ve already invested in it. I cringe at the amount of below average meals I’ve made my family eat because they took so goddamn long to prepare! Or the amount of ill-fitting clothes I’ve worn because I sewed them myself and I didn’t want to ‘waste’ the money I spent on the fabric and the hours it took to make them.

I obviously struggle with separating the value of the investment from the value of the outcome. This isn’t surprising when most of us are brought up believing that if you work hard you’ll reap the rewards. However there is a misunderstanding. There is an assumption that just because you worked hard or invested lots of resources you are guaranteed or owed the reward or success.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt. Seth Godin.

There is a large part of me that doesn’t want to stop writing my blog because I have nearly written 100 of them. It seems like such a waste to have spent all of that time and energy to then just stop at a seemingly random number. There is also a small part of me that thinks maybe I should stop? Why keep going if I don’t have too.

I’ve watched Matt spend hours in the kitchen preparing us some fantastical meal only for it to turn out badly and him dump the lot in the bin and get fish’n’chip for dinner instead. The ability to create something and let it go is a constant battle for creative types especially. It can be so hard to not link your self worth to the success of what you create. That is what has happened to this blog.

When I first started writing it I was sending it out into a near empty room. My mum and sister read it and maybe a few friends. Now on a good week I can have a few hundred people engage with my blog! It’s awesome but also horrible. I now spend far longer than the two hours I have allocated on Friday morning to write it because I have a larger audience to impress! Or at least that's how I feel.

I spoke to my therapist this week about it. She asked why I continued to write and I couldn’t really give her a straight answer. She had read a few of them and said that I write really well which made me blush! What I did manage to articulate by the end of our session were two things. Firstly, I find sharing my experiences (whether they be positive or negative) to be extremely therapeutic. A problem shared is a problem halved. Secondly, I really value the feedback.

A few weeks ago I wrote a very “self-punishing” blog, my therapist said, about boundaries and a project I fucked up. While I almost didn’t send it out, I’m so glad I did because I got some truly overwhelming responses from people who had been in a similar situation and really connected with my story.

This made me realise that I fundamentally want to share inorder to connect. I don’t want sympathy or praise or lots of thumbs up. I want to share something I’ve learned or experienced in the hopes that someone out there will learn something new or feel more inspired and motivated by their own situation.

I’m going to keep writing this blog for the foreseeable future. I feel like Matt and I have chosen a life path that is so full of hard lessons and ridiculous situations that it would be a waste not to share our journey. I will always be learning about new and marvous ways to approach life and sharing them with others is the only way I can be sure I’ve understood the concept or idea myself.

I may look at the way in which I post this blog. It will always be on my website but I’m going to review the social channels I use so if you do genuinely want to receive any future Bulletin Boards then I’d suggest signing up to the mailing list below. That’s where my mum reads it so I’ll have to keep sending it via email!

If you have ever written back or commented after reading a Bulletin Board that resonated with you or shared it with a friend because you felt they needed to read it as well, I want to say thanks. Thank you for filling up that empty room of people I’ve connected with. You’ll never know how truly grateful I am!