Sometimes it is hard to even start to write this blog, sometimes my mind just goes blank. Call it writers block, or what ever you want, all I know is that it is very frustrating to me. My goal is to try to write something each and everyday, I want to improve my writing, my relaying of information, and the only way to do that is to practice, and the only way to practice writing, is to write and read. The reading thing I got down, I read everyday, even if it is just a few news stories online. However the writing thing, well that’s a different story, I try to write everyday, I launch my editor everyday, I even sometimes start to type, but more often than not I delete what I have written and don’t post.
I understand that it is not an earth shattering event if I don’t post to my blog, that my readers will make it through the day, and there lives will continue, but for me it is a disappointment. I have difficulties remaining committed to tasks I set for myself. I, like a lot of people, start out strong, but seem to fizzle out shortly after the start. I don’t give up, completely, I just fizzle…
Lets look at a few tasks that turned into Fizzles:
TASK: Eating Healthy
GOAL: Weight Loss and over all Health
At the start, I was all for it, I cleaned my cupboards and frig, tossed out what was unhealthy, tossed my snack foods and when shopping for healthy alternatives, I are carrots and other healthy stuff. I did good for about 4 weeks, basically until I had to go shopping again. Even then it want to bad, I mostly purchased healthy stuff, but the next trip, all was lost. I was back to my old self, more or less. I did change some of my eating habits, I now go meatless two days a week, eating fish at least one day per week. I try to eat more heatlyish meals, I add more veggies to my plate and try to keep my portion size down. But my gusto for the over all healthy food didn’t take, only part of it did.
TASK: Write a Book
GOAL: Get Published
This task is somewhat different that most tasks I have, it is a task that is, in some ways completed, but in others not. I have written several manuals, for he faith formation program I, along with a partner, created. We self published the material and used it with in our parish. We did attempt to market the program, but to no success. So in one way I have already been published. But this goal is more about creating a book, not a manual, but a book for the public. I have started several “drafts” if you can call them that. I have had several ideas for a book, even began the work on them, but never get to far into it. Here i s my problem, I have research, and to write a book, you need to do research. So I always get stuck right after I lay out the concept, the ideas of what this book should look like, should be about. Once I have to do the research, I abandon the task. So I need to learn how to get over that, or I will never get published. Learn to love research or learn to pay for it, those are my two choices.
TASK: Blog Daily
Goal: Improve writing skills
This task has had several starts and stops. I started off strong on a blog called STATIC Youth, I posted daily, sometimes 2 times a day for month, never missing a day, unless I was just unable to get to the net. I even started a second blog, You Can Be new, and posted to it daily. I decided that posting to 2 blogs was just to hard, so I started to just repost the same article to both blogs, eventually I merged them into one, and renamed the STATIC blog to View Point: Paul, that blog was than merged into this blog here, An American Point of view, all the articles from both blogs were migrated to this new blog and on I went. But my postings have become less and less, my daily habit drifted away and I am finding it harder to post. This, I feel is due to the same reason that I never write my book. I made a resolution that I would do more research in to my blogs, provide more links and facts, rather than just my opinion. Because I hate research, I post less, but this may be changing, I may decide to post with or with out the back ground research, just my view-point.
So as you can see, I have issues with commitment to my own tasks, I am striving to improve, and I have, over the past few years, but I have a long way to go. I will get my book written one day, and published, I will continue to improve my eating habits and I will blog more and more. It’s all connected, this I have discovered.
Not every task I start ends up as a fizzle, for example, I decided that I would keep a tidier home. My house was never “dirty” but at times it can become untidy. So I decided to start with one task, as silly as they may sound, folding my PJ’s at night before I put them away at night. This one task has lead to many other life style changes, simple and silly as that may seem. Not sure why, but I think it was just an over all mind change. For 46 years I never concerned myself with folding PJ’s, I just stuck them in a drawer to be pulled out the next night, but now, my PJ’s a re folded, my shoes are but away each night, I polish and shine them more often (I never bothered before) and my over all bedroom remains tidy. All because I decided to fold my PJ’s.
So I know that the other tasks will happen one day, once I find there PJ’s that I need to fold. The one little task that will become the life style change I need, what ever it is.
Life is full of PJ’s, that one thing that triggers the rest to fall in to place. You know what I mean, you will walk up to that life long smoker and notice they quit. You ask them what happen and they say, Just decided it was time. They may have decided it was time hundreds of times before, but for some reason this time it was time. What changed? What made this time the right time?
The goal in life is to find your PJ’s, that one life changing event that will alter your course and set you on the path to greatness. Not greatness in the worlds eyes, but greatness in your own, greatness in the only way it matters, greatness of character and being.
That task that we place before ourselves are all created to achieve the same end, to become all we are made to be, to become the greatness we know we are to be. Each “failure” is just a lesson needed to be learned, and opportunity to fold your PJ’s yet again, in hopes that this will be your time, your moment to greatness.
Opportunities present themselves constantly, the next pair of PJ’s are always out there before us, if we choose to see them and to fold them. All we have to do is look.
God Bless
Paul Sposite
An American Point of View 