Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Hope - warning this isn't full of warm fuzzies

If there are any of you out there that wondering where I've been, well, to be honest, I've been avoiding posting for the last little while.

I'm not going to go into it here, but what I will share is that I'm struggling with some things.  I'm okay.  Everyone's healthy.  It's just that, as we all know, life has it's good times and it has its not so good times.  This is just one of those not so good times.

Part of the reason I've been avoiding putting anything up on my blog is because you can imagine what this has done to my writing life.  I struggle with procrastination at the best of times, so when I'm in a funk, there ain't a lot getting done.

I was thinking today though:  Regardless of how far away I am from reaching the goal I set out for myself at the beginning of the year, I've still accomplished a lot.  I have a really solid working draft of my first book.  And I'm almost half way in to my second.

I don't want to lie and tell you that I'm not questioning just about everything right now.  Because I am.  I'm wondering if my plans for these novels are just way too ambitious.  Yet at the same time I've come so very far that I just feel like I've got to keep going.

Honestly, if there was one thing I could wish for it would be for someone to light a fire under my ass so I could speed up and write these books as fast as so many authors write there's — in weeks, in months — and regardless of time spent have the books still turn out fantastic.  At this rate, the time span I'm working with just seems to somehow be growing, regardless of how much closer I get to an end.

Phew! Talk about a pile of depression just in time for the holidays.

Like I said, it's why I've been avoiding this blog

But if I didn't post anything until things got better, then I would start to feel like I was hiding parts of me.  I am a believer in positive thinking.  I am a believer in gratitude (as you know very well if you've read this blog in the past).  But I also believe in truth.  I'd be putting a whole lot of fake up on this blog if I only posted when I was feeling motivated, happy and optimistic — or even just pretended I was.

The truth? I'm human.

And right now this human is feeling a little lousy, and in some ways like she's let herself down.

Do I know if tomorrow will be better?  Does saying it will be, over and over again make it so?  Not if there isn't any action to go along with.

In the meantime, what I know for sure is I've got hope.  After all this time, after so many years of having a dream, even when I've worked at it at a pace that seems to move me forward in inches instead of miles, I've still got hope.

Because regardless of the time that's past, of the months I've been productive and the months I haven't been, regardless of the steps back I've taken in light of the steps forward, I haven't given up.

And I don't intend to.

I can be grateful for that.

No comments:

Post a Comment