***I am celebrating my 100th blog post today! Yay us!!! If it wasn’t for you, my readers, my cheerleaders, I wouldn’t have had the inspiration to keep at this. Thank you!!***
Do you have a dream of something you would like to do someday? Go back to school to earn a degree, travel to a foreign country, find a job that you are passionate about, have a family, build your own home….I bet there is something that drives you, even if you stuff it away when it tries to urge you follow it.
Following your heart and chasing your dreams can be a hard thing to do. Often it isn’t the practical thing to do. Often we put other’s needs in front of our own which delays being able to begin that chase. But oh, when you DO decide to go after that dream, it is an exhilarating (and maybe a little bit nervous) feeling.
Giving it a go
I’ve been writing for fun (and sometimes work) all of my life. But I never took it too seriously because I’ve always had a mortgage to pay and children to tend to and it wasn’t practical to either quit my job to write a book that might not sell or to lock myself away each night to write and never see my family. But sometimes when we have a dream and we have the talent to support it, that itch to live it doesn’t go away. So with some prodding from family and a friend, I started a blog. My first thought was, who wants to hear what I have to say? There are thousands of other blogs out there. Then I read an excerpt from a book that you should always write for yourself. That resonated with me. While I hope I am not writing a blog in vain and it thrills me to pieces when I get comments thanking me for my words, I have to remember to write for myself, from my heart and not to satisfy somebody else’s need (after all this is MY dream). So I painstakingly designed a web site and almost five months ago, began sharing my voice with you. This has gotten me in the habit of writing each day, of living through the creative process and being able to actually get my thoughts onto paper (or the screen) instead of squashing them inside. It has truly been exhilarating.
And there you are, you have a dream and live it! Until something up comes up…
I began my blog in January when life is slow in my household. Spring brought a little more busy with kid’s activities and that balance was a bit challenging. Now that summer is here, life should be more relaxing. But we decided to sell our home, and holy heck, the balance to my busy is way out of whack. And besides that is a hip problem that I am still trying to resolve that keeps me from my other joy, running. Our summer plans are at a stand still trying to figure out when we might move, where we might move, when I might need surgery, and the more time that goes by the more I wonder if it’s going to start affecting our fall plans as well. I’m stressed, I feel out of shape, and I need a glass of wine!
So what do you do when the going gets tough?
It was easy to live my dream when my schedule was easy. Now I am juggling a lot of priorities in the air. I do know this- I cannot give up my writing. Time at the keyboard is what centers me. This time of tapping at the keys keeps my happy spark lit. But the pressure of publishing daily and keeping my life in balance is becoming harder. I began my blog writing five days a week because I knew that is what I needed to get myself into the habit of writing regularly. But now that I have a taste of this wonderful venture, I am going to try to balance my busy by only publishing 2-3 times each week. That doesn’t mean I’m not writing every day….how else would that masterpiece book get written if I wasn’t? But I need less pressure to produce a finished piece each day.
My point here?
One, to forewarn you, that while Balancing the Busy is not giving up, she is balancing her busy by cutting back. Two, if you start following your dream and the going gets tough, do not give up! Take the time to strategize, explore options, and make it fit into your life the way you need it too. Change is ok and you my friend, are worthy and deserving of following your dream!
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