On January 1, 2018, I set myself a goal. I was to write 52 blog posts in 2018.

In our all-staff meeting, the CEO of my organization handed out index cards and instructed each of us write down 1 personal goal for that year.

"Publish 52 blog posts." I'd write 1 per week.

I knew my goal was simple. I didn't know if it would be easy. I didn't know what I would write about. But I knew the goal itself was simple.

I posted weekly through the end of March, three months, but did so in fits and starts. I never found a regular rhythm, I routinely put myself under the gun, and I didn't have a cohesive vision for what I wanted to say. I found that it wasn't working for me.

Due to a combination of things (life circumstances, overthinking, and failure to establish adequate systems and environmental supports on my part among them), the weekly posts ended there.

The behavior didn't stick. The formula wasn't right.

The blog had become all but a memory - it was out of sight and out of mind. While we're having it out, it felt good not to burden myself with the extra responsibility I'd placed onto myself with everything else going on being a new parent.

Fast forward eight months to November. Through a completely unrelated serendipitous sequence of events, I decide to start up a daily blog.

I can feel your incredulity through your computer screen:

"Well if the weekly blog didn't work, what in sweet Lorraine's name gives you the idea that a daily one will work?"

A little background might help explain. This 'daily blog' idea didn't appear whole cloth from thin air. I have been blogging on and off personally and professionally for some years now. The switch has been "OFF" much more than I'd like during that time - part of why I resolved to publish a daily blog as you'll see in a moment, and part of why I came up with the original goal of a weekly post.

In my regular newsletter perusals, I just so happened to read several successive stories about the benefits people had seen from daily blogging. I decided it would be a fun challenge.

Fast forward to mid-December, I'm about 30 daily posts in before I come to the startling realization: given where I'm at today, and how much time we have left...

This daily blog challenge is going to take me all the way to 52 posts published in 2018 - and then some.

I was over the moon.

But I'd be remiss if I stopped the story there. Because, there's something strange and very intriguing about that serendipitous fact. To be clear, I will be the first in line to criticize the misleading simplicity of a movie like "The Secret" - the seminal punching bag representing all the "snake oil-y" proponents of the Law of Attraction's magical powers. And yet, I'd be a damned liar if I didn't acknowledge there was something oh-so-intriguing and deliciously juicy about how this all went down.

Consider the facts:

• Guy creates a personal goal on Jan 1 to write 52 blog posts in 2018.

• Guy loses it 3 months in. Gets less than 15 posts under the belt.

• Forgets about it for a while - just wasn't right.

• 7-8 months later, guy feels inspired to start up daily posts, not even (consciously, at least) considering the whole 52 posts thing. Completely independent (consciously, at least)

• Realizes near the end of the year he made good on that promise he'd made, without even directly going for it.

Maybe it's just a nice story and nothing more; a good thing happened to a good guy, and it doesn't say jack squat about anything outside the specifics of the story.

But maybe it's more than that? At the very least, it'll make for a heckuva blog post.