Today I'm Gonna Keep Going

Evie, my inner critic, has been on a death tear ever since I printed out my blogs with the intention to read them and see which ones might warrant putting into some kind of bound printed version. It’s ridiculous. She tells me that it’s all bumper stickers or coasters. She tells me it’s way too dark. She tells me it’s boring. She tells me it’s irrelevant. She tells me to get a law job. How do I know it’s her and not the universal voice of truth? My better judgment? My better half? I’ll tell ya: It makes me feel shitty when I think those things. And I’m not supposed to feel shitty. I’m supposed to feel neutral to good, maybe even excellent, about myself and the stuff that’s important to me. My work.

I’ve identified a crowding issue, again, in my life, and I’m going to take action. Small action, which is really the best kind for me I’ve learned. The crowding issue is that I’ve managed to crowd up my days with stuff that is not as important to me as what I’m leaving out. So I gotta make space to put in what I know I want to do, but somehow never have time for.

It’s terrifying. It’s terrifying. I get something out of all that other stuff. I read a thing once, I think it was Anne Lamott. She said something like she needs to treat schedule like the schedule of an important artist, “She’s not available” for this that and the other thing. I want to be less available, less available even for the stuff I make up to take up space.

I said to a friend, well it was a special week, it was Halloween. And then I realized it’s going to be a special week with Thanksgiving, and then winter holidays, and then Valentine’s Day, and on and on and on. It’s always a special week. There is always something happening out there that is louder and somehow more appealing than paying attention to what is happening in here. Short term.

I want the long-term good feels. The “I did that,” good feels. To get those, I need to amp up the time I devote to my Plan A. I know how to do that, the incremental thing, bit by bit, shift by shift. So now it’s the execution, day by day, through the Evie wails and protestations and manipulations. Just for today. Today, I’m gonna keep going.