100 Visionaries-Fear-Failure-Support

I had an interesting "internet moment" earlier this week.

I came across an online social justice group, and reached out to one of
its members because their work is closely aligned with what I envision
100 Visionaries to be.

The group had a conference a few years ago, a list serve and people.

I came across their list serve archive Thursday morning, right after I placed
those fund raising widgets in the sidebar.

Because the group is not very active I was curious as to what happened
and whether their lack of activity corresponded was an early indicator of
the to the lack of activity, with my fund raising widgets.

I wondered, if folks really WOULD rather talk about Imus, Jay Z, David Banner,
Obama, Jesse Jackson and The Wackness than actually do something.

So I decided to take action.

I sent an e-mail to a woman I had been in contact with via twitter who
was, ironiclly on the list serve and her point blank, "What happened?
You all seem to have had a lot of traction and now there is very little
activity".

This was a risk for me, because she didn't know me from a stick
of gum and could have said, yo- go kick rocks.

She responded, candidly saying "Yo- do I know you?"

She then went on to say that it became clear to her that, in the
organization, people were more interested in talking about the problem
than doing something about it.

That had me stuck because it is what I feared would happen
with 100 V.

Then I also thought about how our kids need to watch us
struggle, fail, succeed and go through personal transformation.

And for that matter we need to watch one another do it.

It makes it feel like its possible.

I got sad. My rationale is that if this group couldn't do, what makes
me think I can?

Then things started to happen.

This dude in Cali e-mailed me on some, yo- is this going to be a virtual
org, are you going to have a board of directors, what's the plan?

I sent him an outline of the next 9 months and he shot
me back an e-mail on his background. When it became clear that
he was type thorough- grad school, undergrad in the trenches
with the young bucks, college counseling, I began to
try and bring him into the fold.

Then another blogger said, I can't do a reflection retreat, and I
responded, thats cool, can you write about how you and your
son deal with pop culture? He agreed.

And I began to see that this is going to work relationship by relationship.

I stepped out on faith and bought the url yesterday.

I see it as one of A million little steps. A million little steps.