I’m trying to rearrange the way I invest my time.
I want to take better care of myself, physically and emotionally. I want to spend more time doing things I enjoy. I’m like everybody else, trying to balance a long list of want to and must do items.
The challenge isn’t any different today than it’s been for years. I think my approach is different now.
I hope I will be patient with myself. Change takes time, and I’m not always willing to let things evolve in stages, one success building on another.
During the past four days, I’ve taken some small steps:
- I stretched and exercised three days in a row.
- I wrote 3,000 words in one day. Part of a memoir project I’m developing.
- I wrote another 3,000 words over the next two days, parts of a two different fiction projects.
- I spent a great afternoon with my daughters.
- I took part in a great critique session during my memoir class. I’m blessed with generous and talented classmates.
- I managed to complete several pieces of good work for my employer.
- And I enjoyed a really, really good steak.
Small steps. All positive.
Let’s see how I do tomorrow.
Categories: Essays
At the End of the Dock 
That is good to hear, Michael!
Small steps, that’s how we get there. I read somewhere it only takes 21 days to build a habit. If an author wrote a page a day, by the end of a year it’s possible to have a first draft of a novel finished.
Having spent a few years wrestling with the writing/not writing monster, I am much more aware of the issues and challenges than I once was. Now that I’ve mastered more control over this monster, there’s one sentence writers around me will hear me say often.
“Anything which is not writing is not writing.”
We can fill our days with many things, pleasurable, important or required, or just plain fun. But whatever we will our days with, when it comes to writing, it all rolls back around to that statement.
It sounds like you’ve got a good handle on wrestling that monster under control. Bravo!
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