Day 2,767

Growth:

The journey of a thousand steps truly begins with one. When I started working with my writing coach and editor on my first book I didn’t quite understand why they were so excited about all the blog posts I had written prior to working together. For me it is a daily habit of writing a little each day. They saw the bigger picture, I was writing something much bigger.

If I’ve written about 400 words per day on average I’ve written over one million words since I’ve started writing this blog! How did that happen??? One step at a time, consistently, over time.

Today it has finally sunk in for me, or at least has started to sink in. As a part of my next writing project I was reviewing my old blog posts and pulling a lesson or a conversation starter from each that I could share with others. After a few hours I was only about 60 days in… only 2,707 more posts to go! 😉

One step at a time, what a beautiful way to build.

Appreciation:

What a feeling to have accomplished almost all I set out to do over these past couple of days in relative isolation! There’s much more work to be done, but after tomorrow morning I will have wrapped up all I wanted and then some. Taking the time to pause and remember a lesson from my dad many years ago has really helped me stay focused.

The feeling of making progress and moving forward is awesome, the knowledge that I am furthering the legacy of several I love fills my heart with joy. Creating and living part of my purpose, what a gift and opportunity. I am so thankful for this time to pause life and create.

Presence:

One of the blog posts I stumbled upon was a moment of presence while wrapping up a camping trip with the boys. My buddy Steve paused us all for a moment as we were about to leave camp and said he wanted to share something with us. He went on to read the following quote. I remember the moment like it was yesterday and the quote has stuck with me ever since.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Thoreau, Walden

Thanks!!!