For those of you who are fully aware that Fridays are devoted to the “Blogging Truths Be Told” series and were looking for it to resume today, I’M SO SORRY for dragging out its return. At the beginning of this week, my mind was fully set on starting the series back up today, since I completed day 30 of the “Creative Movement” goal-setting challenge on Monday. But, I just couldn’t let another week go by without acknowledging my wonderful blogging friends for tuning in to the 30-day challenge.
There were some of you that checked out my creative adventures from day 1 and travelled with me all the way through my journey, and I truly thank you. Words (and I’m a words person) can’t adequately express how appreciative I am for the time you took out of your lives to check out what was going on in mine. YOU were the reason that I was able to make it through the challenge like I’d set out to do from the very beginning. I went in with a mindset to complete the challenge, but I don’t think I would have realistically finished as well as I did without your support. Knowing that my Accountability Partners would be tuning in to see what progress I was making on my goals made all the difference in the world.
As I stated in previous posts during this challenge, YOU would be the driving force getting me through this thing. And you were. You showed up day after day, and that fact made me show up. If I’d never put it out there (in the blogosphere) that I was doing this 30-day challenge and wanting you to hold me accountable for doing so, I think I would have skipped some days here and there. Or, I could have easily taken a lengthy challenge hiatus without thinking twice about it. And I certainly wouldn’t have felt any substantial guilt if I decided to bail out early and not return to the challenge at all. After all, who would really care?
Oh, but YOU cared. Again, you showed up.
I’m not going to lie, though. There were times that I wanted to stop in my tracks and pull over for a day, or two, or a week. There were quite a few days during the challenge that I missed out on sleep, and it was amazing that I was even functioning with any semblance of creative sense. But, I managed to keep plugging along. (By the way, I don’t advise forgoing sleep in order to complete a challenge. You pay a price for that. And lack of adequate sleep is one of the reasons I won’t attempt another 30-day challenge any time soon.)
Nevertheless, I just want to thank those of you who helped me every day by gracing me with your online presence. You read the posts, liked the posts, commented on the posts, and basically provided me with the motivation to keep progressing with my goals (even on the days I didn’t want to). So, thanks for that. Thanks for your devotion to holding me accountable for what I said I was going to do.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to on my to-do list, but I did work toward accomplishing goals on all 30 days. And, I got a lot done. I feel good about what I did accomplish and the challenge made me realize that I have so much more that I’m capable of doing — all in due time.
The challenge also lit a fire under my rear end. Even though I’m still recuperating from the lack of sleep, I feel energized to keep plugging along on those goals that I started but still have follow-up items to work on, or on those goals that I started but are on-going in nature, or on those goals that I had on my list of to-dos but wasn’t able to get to during the challenge.
I also learned that . . .
- I’m capable of doing hard things.
- I’m capable of learning new skills.
- I’m growing in my technological aptitude.
- I’m allowed to ask for help if I need it.
- I miss working with people one-on-one.
- I would like the opportunity to work with organizations/entities in my local community.
- life balance is key to longevity in goal achievement.
- I’m getting used to not getting my way in this creative content journey.
- although I’m not always getting my way, I’m just stubborn enough to not give up on my dreams (a.k.a., goals).
- I’ll continue to goal set and goal achieve (with or without a 30-day challenge).
That last point reminded me that I also intend to keep the goal-setting and goal-achievement reports going on this blog. You’ll see me interject a blog post here and there giving you an update on what’s been happening on the goals front. Just in case you’d like to know, that is. Can you tell that I want to stay on the “Creative Movement” campaign? Well quite frankly, I just bask in the feel-good of checking things off my to-do list. It’s a beautiful thing . . . a wonderful feeling.
As a matter of fact, I checked off the revisions to my paperback and e-book formats for Playground Instruction for the Growing Adult yesterday. And my revised manuscripts are now uploaded on the Kindle Direct Publishing website. The revised ebook is LIVE on Amazon and the paperback version should be LIVE very soon. DONE. Whoo hoo! And, I started on my Degrees of Maternity podcast. I should have it functional sometime next week and I’ll definitely devote a blog post informing you of its debut, what the podcast is about, and when episodes will be regularly distributed (Wednesdays, perhaps). Oh, and I have so many more things coming down the pike.
I’m on a mission – a mission to keep progressing on my creative content journey. Just you wait and see. Hope you’ll come along with me.
degreesofmaternity.com 