Category: motivation

an unfinished house

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There is a lot about my house that is unfinished. The dining room floor needs to be sanded and stained and part of the living room needs to be re-stained. A significant number of transition strips between floors need to be purchased or created and installed. There are two rooms that need flooring and three that need trim and four that the Lord truly… well anyway. 

It will be a long time before there are no more boxes in the house and maybe longer before I feel settled. At this rate it could be forever before this place is home. But that’s a pessimistic and unfortunate view of everything packed or unpacked, and I don’t choose it. I choose to just keep swimming (hello Dory, I see you there.) 

Keeping on doesn’t look big, which is a bummer. Sometimes it feels bigger than it looks, which is helpful. Today I moved eight paint cans out of the corner of a room and laid down a small braided rug and arranged a delicate heap of six pillows. I found two old quilts of mine, one that I made and one that my aunt made for me. My toddler and I counted the star pattern squares in the quilt I’d made (there are nine, if you were wondering) and then we folded the quilts next to the corner and now one more part of the house is closer to finished, ready, unpacked, home. I did it, the keeping on, this morning. It didn’t look big, especially since I had to move a large TV screen from one unfinished room into another just to try to finish that corner. It felt like rearranging work without making any progress. But the pillows were progress. I pulled them out of a large black garbage bag and dug the blankets out of a trunk in my bedroom and now one corner of the house has been transformed. What used to be temporary storage for a rotating fan and some paint is now a reading nook under a window, and even if hanging the curtains has to wait another day or month or two, we’ve made progress. 

Part of the reason that keeping on looks so little and feels so big is that a lot of it is outlet and light switch covers that I need to put back on in rooms that we painted. You’d think there’s nothing easier and you’d be mostly right, except that apparently the motivation required to move eight paint cans, one rotating fan and a large-screen TV is less than what’s required to take the outlet cover from the mantel and fasten it to the outlet two feet to the right. I may not be the brightest and best with math but there’s something unbalanced about that equation. 

But now it’s afternoon and afternoons are for baby naps and then long walks with the toddler, and I don’t have the energy on top of planning dinner to reattach outlet covers. This is why there is a choice; it’s not a choice so much of what happens, because four out of four people in this house need to eat before bed tonight. It’s an attitude choice. I get to look around at the unsanded dining room floor and the outlet covers that are beginning to get mismatched and moved around, and I just get to choose one small thing to do, and then choose joy. 

Joy is shy. She’s always coming to the door but Dissatisfaction knocks louder. Use the peep-hole, or the doorbell camera if you’ve got one. Dissatisfaction will pelt you with the outlet covers until you have square-shaped bruises, but Joy will wink at them and ask if you’re serving ice cream or chocolate cake for dessert, because that pile of brightly colored pillows needs to be celebrated. Joy will pull up the window shades and ignore the dirty dishes and let the kids play outside barefoot in January because they’re having fun and really, it’s just mud. Joy will painstakingly count the nine patchwork stars on that old lap-quilt you made a dozen and a half years ago even though it’s already past naptime, because the three-year-old loves his new star-blanket and Joy wants to witness it. 

Lean in. Choose joy. Keep on keeping on one paint can, one throw pillow, one patchwork star at a time. It’s worth it, because a home isn’t made by choosing the perfect trim and deciding yesterday which floor to lay in the bathroom. Home lives in the outlet covers that float around on the mantel while you create a reading corner for your babes, in the mud you brush off their shoes after they’ve played outside in the warm afternoon. It’s in the cup of coffee you enjoy while they nap and the friends who eat around the table even while the floor under them is rough around the edges. Home is not the finished house that’s kept you awake at night working, but the unfinished house you’ve really lived in. Live in it, darling, and watch the house become a home around you.

birthday wishes

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Here is something very important that I’m not very good at remembering: the age you are today is the best time to learn that thing. I don’t care what thing exactly, I just mean the thing that you wish you’d learned years ago. The boundaries or the confidence or the ways of enjoying vegetables so that you eat them more often. Whatever it is you’re learning now and wish you’d learned a long time ago. That thing. Right now is the best possible time to learn it.

Here’s how I know this: regret. It is easy to look at myself in high school or college and wonder why that version of me didn’t enjoy working out consistently or eat a little bit less breakfast cereal and a little more protein. Why she didn’t have more confidence or, for goodness sake, stop wearing oversized t-shirts with baggy jeans (do not go stalk my old Facebook photos, now is not the time). But the truth is she was doing her best. Past me and past you – they can’t fix anything now. It’s happened. That story has been written and there aren’t any backspace keys. You did what you could with what you had. That’s what matters.

Today is my birthday. Birthdays are important to me. I’ve always loved them. And having a January birthday is hard in the midwest where I grew up, because snowstorms and blizzards are just too popular there. But Colorado is coming in clutch with that sunshine and I’m sitting by an open window listening to the birds right now, no snow in the forecast all week. I’ve learned a lot this year. It was sort of the J-term none of us wanted, yeah? 2020 was the school happening when there shouldn’t be school and none of us had much choice besides adjusting to the pressure somehow, and if we didn’t learn it all this year, we’ve got time to unpack it going forward. But it was a year meant to teach and test, maybe over and over again like the nine months of a school year (may summer break come quickly, amen.) But birthdays are not just fantastic, they’re a fantastic time to reflect and reflecting tends to remind me of all the things I wish I’d known earlier. Never mind the whys and hows of how I could have learned them earlier, or the things I was learning earlier. I just wish, you know?

But here’s the thing about birthdays and wishes: those wishes aren’t meant to be spent on regrets. You take those wishes and aim them forward, pull back all the way like you did when you borrowed your brother’s slingshot and flung bits of gravel across the yard. Pull back and close one eye and aim forward. Point those wishes towards learning new things, not regretting old things. You did what you could. You made it through. You’re here now. We’re taking this birthday and this sunshine and this big set of wishes and we’re taking one step forward at a time. This is no time to be looking over your shoulder. 

What’s important, what’s really going to make the difference this time, is that you’re more aware. Odds are you weren’t able to learn this particular thing way back when. You were still laying a foundation in those days. You had to learn why vegetables were important and also how to cook before you could feel at home messing around in your kitchen, whipping up healthy meals day after day. And sometimes it takes years of trying to become a runner before you recognize that running is your arch-nemesis and those twenty-five minute cardio-strength circuits on YouTube were made with you in mind. Not everybody can run half-marathons. My sister can and I call her from my couch after she’s gone home and showered to tell her she’s amazing. Not everybody can make a great salad from scratch, guided by the subtle touch of intuition and a shared genetic code with Gordon Ramsey. But damn if I can’t season my sauteed veggies like nobody’s business. And you’ll never see me on the Great British Baking Show (partially because I’m not British), but my kitchen has still seen its share of chocolate cakes, and chocolate covers a multitude of ills. (To most people; not Paul Hollywood, but whatever.)

So eyes forward, darling. Accept that there were foundations and layers of bricks that had to be laid down in order for you to get here. You’re not behind. You. Are. Not. Behind. Look up and walk forward, one foot in front of the other, because there are wishes to be made on candles this year. There are new things for you to learn and baby this is the absolute best time for you to learn them.

of throw pillows and washing dishes

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Every night after I tuck my littles into bed but before I sit down with a glass of wine, my husband and I blitz-clean our house. I wash the dishes. He picks up the throw pillows (too-aptly named) and the teething toys. I scan the living room for plates and juice cups left out all afternoon. He vacuums under the toddler’s place at the table. I pick up the dirty socks and onesies that got tossed in the general direction of the clothes hamper and put the diaper rash cream back on its shelf. He wipes the counter and measures out the grounds for tomorrow’s coffee. And then we look at each other, and sigh and let our shoulders droop a little, and he mixes up a simple cocktail while I pour some cheap red, and we go sit in our respective armchairs. 

And the only reason I don’t blitz the house before dinner or during naptime is because there are other things to blitz while the sun shines. Picking up this puzzle before we can get that one out. Putting away the crayons when we want to go for a walk. Wiping up spilled milk without crying, and teaching a three-year-old to brush his teeth after breakfast. Reading, and reminding one child not to throw the books while I keep the other from putting them into her mouth. Sometimes we remember to say “Sorry Mommy,” and sometimes we remember a little better after there’s been a natural consequence. Sometimes we remember best when we’re not also hangry, or just up from a disorienting nap. 

There’s a hiking trail to blitz, or a Starbucks run or a doctor’s appointment or the dentist. A workout, a playdate, a phone call to this or that favorite auntie. And sometimes there are so many things that I sink into a cozy chair at naptime, hungry for a late lunch, and realize I haven’t really sat down since I climbed the stairs to get the kiddos up at 7 am. And after they wake, I won’t have nothing-to-do until after they’re in bed again, and I’ve blitzed the house just clean enough to relax for an hour or so before I brush my teeth again and set my wine glass in the sink as a precursor for tomorrow’s breakfast dishes. 

I don’t bring up the blitzing to complain about it. Everybody has work. These people have more work and those have less. These stay home with children all day and those don’t. I stay home. And this season is different than it will be later. One day they’ll take themselves to the bathroom and I won’t even think of diapers, or even of wiping their bottoms when they’re all done. One day they’ll be able to reach the bread and the toaster and the butter knife all by themselves and I won’t spend most of snack time saying Yes, I’m coming – just a minute over and over while I try to remember toast with honey and milk in the purple cup, not the green. One day. Not today. Today I spend a solid six hours in work and busyness before lunch and if I’m lucky only another six after naps. 

I understand that this is the way it is. I don’t need it to change before it’s time; kids will grow at their own pace and there’s nothing I can do to change that, nor would I. Except maybe I would fast forward through some of the vegetable battles we have at dinner. I digress. I am not bemoaning the hard and constant work that comes with parenting. But even while I willingly, wearily place one foot in front of the other, I sometimes wonder what’s the point? 

What good is there in picking up throw pillows and arranging them on the couch, or putting away rubbery teething toys and shiny rattles if we’re going to pull them out again in the morning? What’s the point in picking up every Hot Wheels car and Tonka car and Playmobil figure and lego person if they’re going to be all over the floor again in ten hours? Why sweep up the peas under the high chair every day if I’m only going to set more peas on the tray in front of my baby tomorrow? 

And I know. I know. The place would be a mess if we didn’t. Cars and peas and pillows everywhere – books thrown and chewed and bent. Shelves probably stacked with more sippy cups and empty toddler plates than books or toys. So we pick up and we teach our children to pick up. The dirty table napkins and the onesies and the muddy t-shirts and socks all make it to the laundry basket eventually, sometimes in several migratory tosses as I encounter them in the house and throw them somewhat in the right direction. The three-year-old brings his plate to the counter after dinner, and some days he pretends to wash the dishes in his little play kitchen while I scrub away at “Mommy’s sink”. 

And sometimes, in the middle of picking up another puzzle piece we missed under the edge of the couch or setting down my evening glass of wine to put away some laundry I missed – sometimes I am able to reach briefly beyond just the step-by-step mundanity of maintaining a home and realize that maybe, these are the little things we must be faithful in before we can have the big things. Maybe the scrubbed dishes and the peas we swept up again today and yesterday and the day before, the poopy onesies that we scrubbed out and the sippy cups we filled with milk and found soured somewhere in the living room and washed to fill again – maybe these moments are building in us the faithfulness for the much that God promises to those who are faithful in little. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe it builds character, as your mother might say, or lays a foundation. After all, if you can faithfully do the dishes three times a day for three hundred and sixty-five days every year, or even faithfully teach the littles as they get older how to do those same dishes in their turn – you can probably be trusted with big things. And maybe in the middle of the repetition and plodding and mundanity, here and there, when the boy puts the books away unprompted or remembers to wipe his hands after dinner – here and there you might even find a moment of glory.

the weather ski

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It is not winter anymore, but I think this essay is more about hope and heart than snow, and maybe even in June we have things to learn about the cold.

When I was in high school, my family went on a ski trip to a town a few hours drive east of our home. It was a once-each-winter trip. Most years we’d drive there in the morning and drive home after they closed, unpacking the ski boots and snow pants on sore feet at midnight. This year, some friends who lived nearer the slopes were out of town, and offered us the use of their home. We accepted gladly.

In the morning, when we were cooking a big breakfast and slowly stretching out our legs, we noticed a single cross country ski standing straight up out of a drift in front of the kitchen window. It was blowing slightly in the wind. Mom chuckles at the kitchen sink, and points it out to Dad when he joins her. They laugh together, and the sound draws all five of us kids, pushing and crowding around their shoulders. 

“Maybe it’s a Weather Ski,” Dad jokes, and puts on a radio announcer voice, “Yes, the weather ski is bent at just a ten degree angle, so light winds today. Keep a watch out for black ice.”

My brother chimes in: “Friends, the weather ski is at a forty-five degree angle; looks like a real blizzard out there!” We laughed together companionably and then scattered again, leaving Mom still washing dishes and the curved, colorful ski bobbing in the intermittent breeze.

Now it is springtime in 2020. I never planned to check the weather as part of my morning routine. Usually I just dress for whatever the day might bring. Jeans, a t-shirt, a jacket, a down vest over it all if it’s cold. But this year, almost the entire nation is under a quarantine. We’re fighting a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. And since I’m not getting dressed in a hurry to take my toddler to play dates and library programs, I’m slowing down to check the weather. That single app on my phone with its prediction of sunshine and temperatures is the indicator of whether we’ll even get outside. My mood seems to rise and fall with the weekly highs and lows. 

Some weeks are warm and sunny. The highs reach for the 70’s for days in a row. I put on shorts and dig out 3T shorts for a toddler who still calls them pants and we find sun hats for him and his sister. We wrangle out the double stroller and head for the grassy spaces in the park. The weather has smiled on us. In weather ski talk, maybe the ski is fading and peeling in the heat – a warm one today folks! 

But intermittently, cold days come. Back in Minnesota, the ski is probably bobbing lightly in the wind while its snowdrift takes on a new layer of white. Here, our red-brick patio slowly disappears under a steady film of flakes. So does my energy. The two-year-old runs from one part of our tiny home to another until he feels the cooped atmosphere too. Then he lags and droops like a wind-bent ski-tip, clinging to me when I let him and sliding to the floor in despondency when I try to get up, do the dishes, finish the laundry – anything to spur us into motion. 

Sometimes it is cold for so many days that I stop checking. I don’t open the curtains in the morning. There doesn’t seem to be much point. Who wants to look at the tired, frozen pile of snow on the patio anyway? The little blue toddler truck that he pushes with his feet is as deeply buried as the real vehicles that we’re not using – that’s what happens when you stay at home for a full month I suppose. I take one look at the picket fence and see the snow in delicate heaps on its ridged top, and I lose hope for the day. The sudden mischief of a black squirrel brushing snow off in bursts, left and right, as he scampers along the rails is lost on me. I’ve already turned back inside to wonder what will become of our day, stretched long and white until the distant evening.

I forced myself out for a walk one cold day. “Won’t I need a coat?” I wondered out loud. “No, just a vest,” my husband reassured me. He gave me a searching look, as if he knew I’d already resigned myself to all the warm layers I’d wear to fend off the cold. “Well then I’m wearing a hat,” I replied in defiance of his optimism. 

I felt like a stranger to the sunshine, walking down the sidewalk towards the park. The air was cool, but not as cold as I had anticipated. The snow had stopped. The sun was lowering towards dusk but miraculously still held some warmth. I let myself take big breaths of the air I hadn’t smelled in days. It was cold and unscented in the dust and impossibly fresh. It tasted like morning air, spring air. My soul seemed to tiptoe forward with cupped hands and shining eyes, like a shy child. I smiled at the masked strangers as we gave each other wide berths – walking off the sidewalk around each other when we passed. 

I have never been the first one out into the snow on a cold day. Not when I lived in Minnesota and adored the “snow globe” days of large flakes coming down slow in the still world. Not when the pines were lightly adorned with picture-worthy white on their branches. Not when the neighbor plowed the drifts from our driveway into one large, snow-fort-worthy heap. But I was once more resilient. I remembered how to see past the cold to the beauty. Snow may be frozen but it sparkles in the light. Winter may be cold but laughter in the outdoors is warm. The weather ski anchored in a drift outside the kitchen window may be bending and dipping in the wind but it’s not waving a frantic warning – it’s just an indicator, like the snow on the patio tells me nothing more than that it is snowy outside. Snow can’t tell me if I’ll find joy when I go out, or whether the work of bundling two children two-and-under into thick snow pants for a short walk will be worth it or not. The weather can only tell me if I need a vest or a coat, not if I’ll find hope in the too-bright sun and air that’s still somehow fresh as a mountain morning. 

It turns out we DO have fun outside, even if some days it’s just poking our heads out to see how cold it really feels. But at least I’m learning not to rely on how far out of the shade the patio snow drift is lying. The weather ski has been reduced again to just that – an old, slightly faded cross country ski nodding along to the wind and the drifted snow – not a needle on the gauge of hope that bends closer to zero as the wind speed increases. I check the app on my phone and plan which part of the day is best for a walk – when will the wind die down, when will the stroller find the least resistance in the snow? When can we get outside in the cool air and carve hope out of the sunshine? I check the weather and I think of the old weather ski, and I smile. 

this can happen

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Saturday mornings are made for coffee and if you are wise in the ways of really making it a weekend, you take your coffee out walking with an old friend in a beautiful neighborhood. Or at least, this is what I did last Saturday. I met Sarah at a coffee place on the familiar corner of a wide, slow street. It’s called Good Neighbors, and is there anything more to say than that? 

We took our coffee to go, walking through the cool morning and talking as fast and enthusiastic as you can only do when you’re all caught up on news and move on to conversation. We talked about everything. The summer camp at which we became friends and still work for, which sort of latte each of us ordered, the freshness of the lilac hedges we walked past. Tattoos came up somehow, and in no logical sequence, tattoos led to my writing. Reluctant as I am to talk about my writing, everything seemed to tumble out in confidence of a supportive listener. The big dreams, the ones about this memoir and that book of essays, the questions about building an audience – maybe I’d held on to those secret thoughts for so long they spoke up of their own accord. I talked, laughed ruefully, wondered and dreamed a bit, and finally shrugged. 

“Who knows though. I’m not really sure what I’m doing.”

“Gianna,” Sarah turned without stopping and looked at me, face all lit up like spring, “this can happen.”

This can happen. 

I hung on those words for a minute, and she poured out enough ideas and strategies to build my dreams sky-high, iron-framed and concrete-founded. 

This can happen. 

It’s been five days of turning over every single suggestion she named and writing down question after question, marketing, hashtags, giveaways, monthly emails – and despite how logical and actionable every single thing has turned out to be, I still can’t believe the three words she said first. This can happen. 

It’s carried me all week now – all tired long week of parenting in a safer-at-home order, bruising my shins on the steps, wading through days of uninspired writing, closing my journal or my laptop or my mouth with a snap because I feel like sometimes I’ve run out of any words to say at all. But I remember that tiny sentence that opened a whole world of hope, and I think it to myself again: This can happen. 

Sometimes that’s all the seed of hope we need to keep a dream alive – one person who knows how to put shoes on a dream and make it start walking. Somebody stares at the sky with you, and sees your same dream, the one you thought was just a fleeting shape in the clouds, and calls it real. One person who can look you in the eye and say, “Yes. Here’s how.” 

I hadn’t planned on taking our conversation from the tattoos I want to the books I plan to write, but there we were, and there was magic in the unplanned sharing of dreams, because now those dreams have a confidence in them that isn’t just mine. They’re backed by somebody I trust – and sure, I’ll still have those days when I can’t see what value there is in any of my work, or I wonder why anybody would want to sign up for a future monthly email from me. But I have Sarah’s enthusiasm to fall back on too, now. I have somebody who cares about these things becoming real, somebody who won’t be shaken or disappointed when I write a bad sentence or a bad paragraph, or when nobody takes notice of an Instagram caption I crafted with heart and vulnerability. 

So darling, whatever that dream is, I want you to hear it from me: this can happen. You may not have all the details figured out and maybe I can’t tell you exactly how to train for the marathon or survive basic training or learn to lead-climb tricky rock walls, but don’t let that hold you back: this can happen. You can do this. You’re not alone. Find somebody to talk to, somebody who knows which step to take. But don’t forget that I’m here cheering for you. Your dream matters. Your goal can become a reality. Your ideas are important. 

Darling, this can happen. Remember it. Say it to yourself often. And if you know somebody who needs to hear it too – send them these words. Heck, say it to them yourself. This can happen. I’m not alone; you’re not alone; nobody is alone. Big things can happen when we begin to tip the balance from wondering to acting, to encouraging and hoping and planning. Let’s take time this week to be Sarahs – to pass out hope like coffee on a Saturday morning and remind each other the ways that big things can really, truly grow into being, one tangible, tiny step at a time.

not your best work

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Today is the day the fears come. You’ve known they would – don’t we all? – but you kept doing the thing until they came because you weren’t so afraid in those moments. Maybe the thing was rock climbing or writing or dancing or working on making new friends. Doesn’t matter much; you get a good enough pep-talk and you can keep going off of that for a while because you feel so seen and so perfectly understood that you can move forward knowing somebody is at your back, cheering for you. 

And then one day you feel alone again. (Maybe that is where most fear is based: we think failure means rejection and rejection, loneliness and so we vow never to fail, even if we must never try.) You felt alone again today. You imagined how it might be if you didn’t perform as well on your next attempt and you wrapped it in failure and you wrapped the failure in rejection and you looked at this like you were holding it in the palm of your hand, and then you threw it as far away from yourself as you could. Nobody, nobody wants to be lonely. 

This, then, is the day that matters most. You will not do your best today. I understand that. I accept that, dear heart. I still care about you. So many people who will probably never know your best work and your worst work and even your mediocre work still care about you; will always care about you. Your skill is not going to be the measure of your loneliness. This day matters because it’s the day you fought back against the fear. It’s the day you rejected the fear of loneliness out of hand. Today is the day you stood up with your knees knocking and you didn’t sit back down again until you’d done that thing, because you’re brave and because you’re learning that this thing right here doesn’t define who you are or even how most people see you. 

There is something to be said for rest days or cheat days or days off but we’re not going to say it here, because we’re not talking about rest and sabbaths and the need to breathe. We’re talking about the need to stop hyperventilating, the need to wipe the tears, the need to blow our noses and take a deep breath and put in one more day, however short, at the habit that’s being built. I said you won’t do your best work today but maybe that was wrong. Maybe you will. Maybe we should realize that some of our absolute best work isn’t the prettiest or the fastest or the longest or the best-played – it was the hardest, to which we still sat down and gave our best. 

I want you to think so much about the work you’re going to do today that you forget to leave space for the fear. If you can’t sit down and do it right now, do the next best thing: start planning it. Plan to sit down after you’ve cleared the dinner dishes; plan to lace up your running shoes when you slip off your heels. Create the vision in your mind and make it as appealing as possible. The cool air brushing past you as you run. The familiar, comforting tap of the keys when you’re practicing piano. The slow way the yoga mat stretches gradually under your fingers, until your palms are damp and sweaty and sliding. Picture this work and picture your place in it. Picture your running route. Imagine the words you’re going to write. Eventually you’ll leave no room for procrastination. You’ll be fighting less fear because you’ll be armed with joy. 

And sure; maybe that sounds a bit grandiose. It doesn’t work on every hard day. Some days stay hard right up through the moment you close the laptop and wonder vaguely how you learned to write such crap. I have done this. I still do this. It will always suck and it will never be easy. Skipping it will always seem like the best option on those days but it isn’t. I need you to believe me: when you think nobody is cheering you on, that is when I’m here cheering you on. I’m writing this for you to remember when you feel like you can’t possibly have anything good to produce or practice today. This day, darling? This impossible day right here? This is your best day. Don’t lose it.

Letter no. 5 – not a part-way girl

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[Note: this was written six months ago, while I was still pregnant.]

I think a lot about willpower and discipline, which might be because I wrestle so much with actually building them. I often act like a part-way sort of person: I build really good habits part of the way and then call them good enough, because that’s when it gets really hard to keep improving. 

I don’t eat sugar often. People like me say we’re “sugar free” and it really is true; but even though I don’t eat sugar and I DO eat tons of veggies, I also eat lots of heavy food. Like cheese. I eat a LOT of cheese. (And eggs. And sugar-free, flour-free scones, slathered in butter.) So my friends are always impressed when I order a simple coffee with heavy cream or an almond milk latte with sugar-free vanilla, or something. And they admire my willpower when I don’t eat pasta. But my zucchini noodles are literally dripping with alfredo sauce. It’s a healthy habit that’s been built up part-way and then left. 

I’ve done the same thing with writing. I get a few guest posts published, get paid for an essay I submitted to an outdoor writing site, and I think I’ve arrived. I stop working so hard. I write less and less frequently. And then suddenly my own blog is facing neglect and I’ve started using my toddler’s nap time for Gilmore Girls instead of a writing session (while I eat a low-carb pizza piled in pepperoni, because you can’t watch Gilmore Girls without eating.) And all the while people keep telling me what a great writer I am, so I don’t get bothered about the good habits that I haven’t kept developing.

In my more discouraged moments I think of myself as a part-way kind of person. I take on the whole persona and in an instant I can see a whole future for myself full of part-way plans that part-way succeeded. Maybe they’re enough to help me stand out just a tiny bit from the crowd, but I know that my habits and efforts will have more potential if I will sit down and put in the time. When I call myself a part-way person, it’s like claiming an identity. I don’t just picture that half-fulfilled future, I start to believe it’s all I’m capable of. I start to believe I’ll always quit just before the finish line, right when it gets the hardest. When I think of myself as a part-way person, I start to move in that direction.

That is exactly what I don’t want for us. There is never a reason to believe that we’ve failed until after it’s actually happened. And even then, failure at one step or stage or goal can just be a catalyst to the next one, if you respond to it that way. Why imagine the worst and subtly call ourselves back and downward in that direction? I don’t believe that whatever you imagine or believe hard enough will just happen to you, but I do believe that if we consistently tell ourselves we’re going to fail, that eventually we’ll stop trying not to fail. We’ll stop trying at all: there will soon be nothing left at which to fail. 

This letter is a tiny success story in itself. I set a goal to write every day. It’s an indefinite goal because I have a baby coming sometime who will absolutely interrupt that streak. But let’s just say right here that I plan to write every day until my baby is born. So far, I’ve reached day eight. I don’t think I’ve ever written for eight days in a row before. This is something new. This is me leveling up that writing habit I’d already created. 

I have goals to improve my eating habits – less cheese and butter, more healthy carbs. I have goals to improve how I spend my time – more reading, more cleaning, more time with my toddler; less social media. I’ve gotten stuck on these before, pictured that bleak future in which I’m only capable of part-way achievement. I don’t want to let myself walk that direction anymore. I’m sitting down with these habits and believing they can change, no matter how slowly and incrementally. 

Here’s to us, babe. Here’s to the habits we’re willing to cultivate beyond the part-way stopping points. Let’s do this.

a long direction – letter no. 1

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[I thought about calling this series “letters in the quiet” because I’ve been offline, writing the things I think I need most to hear: but it’s coming slowly home to me that maybe I’m not the only one who needs to hear some of these words and so now they’re letters to be shared. Don’t read this thinking I’ve reached all my goals. Really, I’m just a girl who needed this pep-talk too.]

It’s possible – just maybe possible – that what you needed to hear isn’t what you expected at all. You need to hear it right when you are waiting with expectation. Right when you are waiting for an expectation. You think there are rules to follow in this dream of yours. (and maybe there are, but there is a time for rules.) You think there is only one right way to get to the place you are going. (And maybe you are right about that too, but not the way you thought you were.)

I think the only way to keep going in a direction is to just keep going. And maybe that sounds stupid or simple or cut-and-dried, or maybe it even sounds like the rules you thought I was about to toss out the window. Well, like the hero of a movie always says when he gets caught with his pants down, I can explain. 

Of course there are rules: there is one big rule. Keep moving. If you want to be a writer, put your butt in a chair and write. If you want to be a runner, stop browsing Nike’s newest running shoes, lace up the ones you have and walk out the door. If you want to be a therapist, start by signing up for some classes. You can’t just talk to your own therapist forever about how you want to do this too, one day. But then your therapist, if they’re worth their salt, will tell you the same thing I’m telling you. It matters a hell of a lot more that you begin and keep going than that you have the same path to get there that everybody else does. 

A friend of mine wants to major in Psychology. A lot of people go to college knowing they want to major in Psychology, and a lot more go to college knowing they have to pick a major and they pick Psychology eventually. My friend started with cosmetology. She went to beauty school, which we have learned not to call it anymore, and has worked with her favorite and least-favorite clients in a salon in a city near where we grew up ever since. It doesn’t sound very glamorous because it isn’t. But tomorrow is her first day of classes at a new college and in a few years she’s going to have the exact same psychology degree as all the people who just graduated high school and haven’t had to hunt down their love of psychology through the hair-cut therapy sessions delivered compassionately to the soundtrack of a hair-buzzer and a scissors. Isn’t that worth something – that knowing? 

Hell, let’s just make it personal. I want to be a published author. And yeah, the only way to get there as I’ve been told again and again is to get my butt in the chair and write. I’m beginning to realize it doesn’t matter as much what I write as that I am writing. Can we agree on that for a second? Because sometimes I go around and around in my own mind, just trying to determine what I should be working on right now and instead of writing I think about writing and puzzle about writing and make writing complicated when it should be as simple as sitting down and getting out the words.

I’m a lot like everyone else trying to write. We all know the struggle: you worry about developing your own voice, but how are you ever going to do that if you don’t write? You worry about finding what it is you love to write but how are you ever gonna do that if you don’t write? You have to write. But who cares what you write? 

I think we are too lenient on ourselves because we are so hard on ourselves. I can explain that one too. You are hard on yourself for not choosing a direction. You don’t know what to work on so you worry about choosing a direction and because you’re so nit-picky about a direction you give yourself permission not to write until you have something figured out. But you’re not going to find success like that. Success comes at the end of consistent hard work. Greatness is out there and it will find people, but it will find those who’ve put in the years of behind-the-scenes training. Who’ve put their butts in chairs and written things nobody has ever or will ever read. 

The invisible work is the work that matters, do you hear me? The invisible work is where you’re going to be built. The invisible work is boring and unrewarding for a long time and everybody who’s somebody has had to deal with that. They’ve had to figure out what they love about this work so they can keep going when there isn’t a soul cheering them on, because for years and years there probably won’t be a soul cheering you on (except me, right here and right now) and you’ve got to be ok with that – you’ve got to get your butt in your chair and your fingers on your keyboard for different reasons than just the cheering. Trust me on this. 

So don’t self-sabotage. Don’t hold back and wait for a direction; don’t stop the habit just because you’ve finished one stage, don’t give up on a direction just because you didn’t start walking towards that degree the day after high school ended. It’s not how you get there that matters. It’s going in the same direction, day after day, until you arrive. I trust you babe: you can do that. And when you get there? That’s when the applause begins.