Slide

There’s been nothing huge in my life that has kept me from blogging. I just stopped making it a priority for a week. And look what happened. Slide, slide, slide. I’m not beating myself up. I’m making an observation. Writing is long-term important to me, and I don’t want to drop it for other things that are important for the moment. The damn laundry can wait another half hour. The kids’ dinner can’t, but the laundry can. For example.

About two years ago, I went to a sales training seminar through work. It was a frightening experience. It could have been worse, I suppose. But it was bad enough. There was much talk about MOTIVATION!! and SETTING GOALS!! and GETTING THE CUSTOMER TO SAY YES!! - that sort of thing.

What I took away from it – besides a renewed conviction that I’m not a sales person at heart – is the understanding that I could fake it if I have to, and the realization that what I learned could be applied to different areas in my life. So I have set goals and have seen them attained. Being a published poet. Running a marathon (I’ve run 2 half marathons – does that count?). Getting a new car. All have happened since I went to that seminar. I have also become closer to my family – another goal I set at the time.

So I’m going to make a new goal that I feel I can keep. The goal is this:

WRITE EVERY DAY.

Wow! What a unique idea! However, self-mockery aside, 9/15/2004 is as good a day as any to start. In fact, if every day I said, “I’m going to write every day!” and every day I did it, that would work, wouldn’t it? It works for recovering alcoholics to take it one day at a time.

Maybe my daily writing won't be a blog entry, but certainly it will be fiction or poetry or journaling in earnest. Not “today had tea with the Smiths” diary entries. Real journals, like the blog is able to be. I think I’ll add long and well-written letters (not email) to the list of qualifying writing, too.

I’m beating Julia to it and daring myself. And anyone reading this is my witness.

What this means, of course, is that I must honestly MAKE TIME to write. Ideally the same time every day, but I won’t worry too much about that right now.

I bought a beautiful little journal to write in when I’m in Japan next month. I can’t wait to fill it up.