A Moment in My Life – Wednesday, March 3, 2021
It’s Wednesday! We did it. We made it halfway through this week—the first week of March. Something about starting a new month on a Monday feels so right. We have a full week of weekdays to get a jumpstart on the new month’s goals. Goals? Did someone say goals? I made a long list of them to accomplish this month. Before March arrived, I was both excited and nervous because of my exhaustive list. Excited because every little bit advances my life in some way. Nervous because of my self-doubts. Can I do it? Could I pull it off? Am I following a pipedream? Who knows?
I spent the bulk of February putting good habits in place and, gratefully, made them routine for most of the month. That’s encouraging. When you do a single task, most likely, you would complete the task. When you do the same task daily, you could do it, but it’ll take a little more commitment and discipline to pull it off. After the first week, you get an idea of whether you can keep going or not.
After almost a year of falling off my workout regime, I finally got back on target for three weeks now. At the end of each week, I’m encouraged that I can continue to do this. Two weeks ago, I added homemade Green Juice to my daily routine and loving it. Those are two areas of my wellness program that I’m improving. I am serious about this. I want to add these good habits into my lifestyle regularly and not just as a fad. Both require commitment and time. Working out was my weakness. I did little jogs throughout the day and am committed to daily one-hour walks, but the workout part was not happening. I knew I needed to push harder for my overall wellness. It finally came together after God knows how many months of psyching myself up to that point. Since working out was my biggest challenge, I made it my priority. Now that I have it under my belt, it’s time to move onto the next challenge—advancing my writing life.
About a year ago, I began blogging weekly, and that taught me I could write. In August, I challenged myself to write daily. As of today, I have written 128 columns. It doesn’t feel like much, but looking at that staggering number, I feel excited, proud, and grateful that I did that. Yet, it is not enough. Some days I feel like a writer fraud. My dear friend Lenore reminded me that I’m a novelist and fiction writer, and then it made sense. That’s what was missing! Not for long—March is all about revamping myself and my life as a whole. Time to incorporate other writing genres into the picture and integrate my new wellness habits to form the new me at the same time.
March took off with fireworks, and that’s superb. Monday, I checked off every task on my to-do list. Tuesday, followed suit. It’s hump day. Yay! I’m halfway through the week. Don’t celebrate yet! It’s so easy to cave to false success. I know me. If I fall into that lie, then it’s game over. That’s the old me. The older and wiser new me says, “Hold on! Not so fast. You are not done yet. You are just beginning. Keep working!” Good advice. Like in the Bible, we have to pick up the cross and choose to follow Jesus daily. We have to do the same to achieve our goals. We can’t just do it once or twice. We have to choose to work on achieving our goals daily.
Two good days doesn’t mean that I’ve made it. Just like if I have a bad day or two doesn’t mean that I failed, and it’s game over. Like anything else, I expect good days and bad days. I can’t let either persuade me one way or the other. To succeed, I need to pick up my cross daily, so to speak, and choose to stay focused and keep working. If someone told me I would have 128 columns written in 7 months, I wouldn’t have believed it. Typically, my goal each day was to sit down and write a column, and each day—I achieved that goal. If nothing else, this is a reminder to take one baby step at a time, then take another tiny step, and I will keep moving forward regardless of whether yesterday was a success or a flop.
Today is a new day filled with new opportunities to achieve our goals and make our dreams a reality. As my Facebook friend Mona Harris said, “Work hard because dreams won’t work unless you do.” Amen to that. We fish. We eat. We no fish. We no eat. We must work and keep on working every day.