In the world constructed around the new reality that is COVID-19 and it’s ramifications, we are all learning what is truly important in our lives. Readers have reached out to let me know how much my books have helped them through these horrible times, and I’m honored and humbled that I can be a part of bringing joy and escape in whatever way I can. It is this escape that we all are searching for and, for me, something I want to carry into a healthier future.
My goal right now is to jog and create healthy coping mechanisms. It may surprise you that I’m not a runner. I don’t have what anyone would assume was a runner’s body, shape, or type. And yet, for years I have tried to do the jogging shuffle—if you're wondering, I liken it to painting a house…sloppy, slow, it may be be kinda ugly, but in the end a goal is achieved. Each time I get to a goal I’m proud of my achievements, but then life happens and I find myself being thrown back to the place in which I started (this moment normally involves an illness and too many Cheetos, but not always).
Yesterday, I started to run. My goal was to jog two (molasses-speed) miles.
I can do this. I thought.
I repeated my mantra all the way to the end of my driveway, then the mailbox. One hundred yards in and I was already tired. I wanted to quit. I didn’t think I could make a half a mile let alone two.
All the negative thoughts poured into my mind: What am I thinking? This is a stupid goal.
Nothing is chasing me. Why does anyone do this?
I’m not a runner. I’m too chunky to be doing this.
This doesn’t feel good. My thighs are rubbing and my butt is jiggling.
So-and-so can run this in fifteen minutes. It’s going to take me hours. This is stupid.
I’m a writer, only a writer. Let’s leave the bodybuilding to athletes.
There’s no way I can ever do this. I’m not strong enough.
I’m just going to hurt myself.
I almost stopped. I almost let all the negative thoughts win. But I looked ahead at the corner in front of me. All I had to do was make it to the corner, then I would reassess. The corner came and went.
Yes, I did it! Goal One achieved. That little win empowered me. No one knew about it, no one knew the struggle that was going on inside me, no one saw the win. I kept going. Soon one corner became two corners, then one mile. Yes, I can quit now. I only really wanted to see if I could jog a mile.
But those little achievements…I loved them. Sure, my body was tight and tired, but I have been reading David Goggins #CantHurtMe and studying the world of Special Operations for my upcoming books. What makes these heroes find the strength to power through the negative self-talk and just keep powering on? I contemplated the meaning of determination, strength of character and will, of goals larger than ourselves, lessons I wanted to teach my kids, and the power that comes from doing more than we think we can.
Yes, my body hurt.
Then, it started to rain. Not the little, refreshing drips that mist your face and make you want to look to the sky. Instead, the rain pounded down upon me as it tried to pierce through my will. The negative thoughts returned.
I’m cold.
How am I going to get home?
What if I slip in a puddle and get hurt?
People are watching, judging.
I’m going to get sick. And for what?
My FitBit buzzed, somehow I’d gone the two miles.
Huh…I wasn’t as tired as I thought I would be at this point. Again, I found myself making a little goal. Maybe I could push myself to the next telephone pole. If I was really, truly tired I could stop then. Goal achieved, win, and I could live the rest of the day with the knowledge that I had completed my initial goal.
I thought about my friends in #SpecOps and all their talk of “embracing the suck". I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read and heard about the power of embracing what we don’t like and how, once we can just deal with the reality we are presented with, we can find strength we didn’t know we had.
It is this time that we must embrace the suck, find the strength.
It is a misnomer to say that we are all in the same boat. We are not. We are all in the same storm. Reality is pelting us, our inner-voices may be telling us all the reasons we have to give up and kowtow, and we are all trying to find our new way in a new world. We are starting over in so many ways.
What have we learned? What can we teach future generations? Oh, there are so many big questions.
And yet, just like a big goal, it all seems overwhelming. We want to quit, we want to hide, we want to struggle privately. It’s all okay.
How can we get past the negative within ourselves?
Embrace the suck. Yes, reality sucks sometimes.
Make a big goal. The bigger the better.
Start your journey. Take one step toward that HUGE goal.
Break it into doable chunks. Once you make the corner, celebrate the achievement, then look toward the next corner.
If you stumble and trip, that is okay, but keep moving toward that next achievement. Sometimes this means that you have to embrace the new suck, but it is what it is. Accept the reality, move forward.
Don’t look back. We don’t live backwards, we don’t read backwards, so why do we get trapped in the world of could have and would have and should have? Keep your story, keep your world, keep your goals all moving forward.
Celebrate the wins. All the wins. Big ones, small ones and everything between. These wins are what empower us. If we don’t acknowledge them, then did they ever really happen? No, it isn’t possible that we have done great things.
Know that by taking small steps you will reach the small goals. All of a sudden, your big goal is achieved.
It is impossible not to be negative. There is no such thing as perfect. Let’s just live our lives by focusing on the little things we can do to make ourselves better and, in turn, the world better. When we are empowered, we empower others. I will keep writing books, one thousand words at a time (my doable goal each and every day) so I can build a book…a book you can read one chapter at a time, a book that will help us all heal. We shall achieve.
In the end, I ran nearly five miles before my hubs came looking for me in the car. I’ve never been happier to see a ratty, old Jeep. We celebrated the win together with high-fives while sweat burned my eyes thanks to the rivulets of rain that poured from my hair. I was a hot mess, definitely an ugly paint job, but I had achieved something I never thought myself capable.
Now, it’s your turn. What do you want to achieve? How can you break this into doable chunks? How will you embrace the suck?
Let’s work together and create a new, better future.
much a part of me as the air I breathe. There are days in which I don’t write, in which life steps into the way and blocks me from my passion. Those are the days I feel lost, adrift in a world that is moving fast, changing, and evolving under my fingertips. In a way, writing is the way to experience the changes, the evolution of life and feelings, and the way to process all the information that barrages my thoughts and actions.I’ve been writing forever. Since I was a child. I didn’t know I was destined to be a writer. I had MANY moments in time in which people pushed me away from writing, even though I had a strength for it (ask me about being falsely accused of plagiarism in high school, but be ready for an earful). So when it came time to decide where I wanted to focus my attention in adulthood, writing wasn’t an option. In my very sheltered and rural world I felt I had only two viable options: 1) Teaching (which would have been great, but I have the patience of a lion trying to peel a banana—a HUGE thank you to all of you out there who have become teachers. NO seriously. Thank you.) or 2) Going into the health care field (this I tried, turns out I also have terrible patience for undeserved whining—yes, please tell me how bad that sliver feels while I’m sitting with a sick child or an elderly woman with two broken hips who is so tough that she refuses her pain meds… please, I dare you).Eventually I became a mom, focusing on the family and the needs that went along with being an island. I was a safe haven. I supported others around me as they followed their passions and found their callings in life. And I looked at my own, I reflected, I thought of the toughest moments of my short-ish life and analyzed my soul.I’m adventurous by nature, one of those people who will try anything once—even when fear tries to hold me hostage. Writing was like that. I knew I liked it. It made me feel something beyond being an island. It made me dig at those sore spots, the ones that everyone has—those moments in time that you make the wrong choice, or embarrassed yourself, or made yourself act in a way that was for the sake of others rather than for yourself… there are a thousand of them. And I drew off them. I drew off my fears. I drew off my past failures. And I set pen to paper. Literally. The first novel I tried to write was five pages on a yellow legal pad. I gave up. I was afraid. I was afraid I didn’t have talent. Heck, I hadn’t taken a creative writing course since high school. I was too old and too young to have such frivolous ideas of writing a book. I mean do you know the odds of being published? (That was before I knew anything about the world of Amazon.) No one I knew had the freedom to be a writer—except journalists. And well, frankly I didn’t know any of them either.
All I knew was that I needed to keep pushing. So I started out small. Writing little, unpaid pieces for a small, local startup magazine (which is now not a small magazine, rather a magazine with world-wide circulation and one heck of an editor).These little things empowered me to finally start and finish my first real novel. It was terrible. (I looked at it the other day and saw some redeemable qualities… a few random gems in a dump of words.) I sent it in to publishers and received the almost obligatory rejections that all first-time writers get. After a few months. I saw it for the massive sinkhole it was. I cried. I picked myself up. I joined a writers group. I finally recognized that I had