Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
I am sitting here with a to-do list as long as my arm. It’s the same to-do items I added three days ago, but somehow my to-do list is handing my ass to me—much like my favorite football team, the Carolina Panthers, are experiencing right now—with a pathetic losing score of NE 24 | CAR 6. No matter how you analyze it, defeat is tough. All those hours of preparation, planning, and hard work, even the best of us feel defeated from time to time.
Perhaps you are experiencing defeat in your life right now? Perhaps you need a little encouragement? (See the headline photo on this article.) Or perhaps, what may help you the most, is to take this “down” time and do a little self-lifting behavior. Self-lifting is a lot like self-care only it’s a bit more like mental health weight lifting. It’s heavier to do, harder to do, and no one is going to show up each day and tell you to do it.
When it’s time to lift yourself out of the muck and mire—it’s all about the grit you’ve got inside you. The sheer determination you’ve got in your DNA that says—I am not going to stay down.
Lately, I have been experiencing two extremes with my writing:
The roaring success of my writing career via client orders and jobs coming my way. It seems this is going better than anything I could have hoped for when I opened my freelance writing business a little more than a year ago. I am now adding “have first 6-figure year” to my list of goals—and it doesn’t seem impossible.
The complete “tanking” of some of my other writing endeavors: difficulty maintaining the querying for my hard-written first novel Elephant Song, the meager sales of published books, and the utter disappointment of my performance on Medium, a platform I love.
These two extremes create a complicated emotional journey that if it had a headline title, would look something like this: GREAT SUCCESS AHEAD! GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT—ALSO AHEAD!!
As you may have also experienced; life is full of highs and lows and this applies to your personal life, your relationships, and, most certainly to your career. It’s ok to celebrate them both—because both have great lessons for us. Some of my biggest personal growth has come from the most painful struggles of my life. I surmise this is true of you, too.
Your takeaway for today is this: Please, do not give up when you are feeling kicked down. Please, keep moving forward. Keep trying. Keep asking each experience: what are you here to teach me? And I assure you, even those down times, will bring you great joys on the horizon.
Latest Work You May Want to See
Here’s one of my professional articles, in case you want to see what I do professionally:
Use CBD Sleep Gummies to Combat Daylight Savings Time Fatigue
Here’s an editing piece I wrote to help writers with their work:
Get Over the Limiting Belief that Your Work Is Your Baby
My latest creative piece is a dystopian fiction piece with a political pulse, something very different for me. But alas, a creative idea is not something I question. I may scout this out to sci-fi publications. Here’s a sneak peek:
The Year 2042
Western Territories of the land formerly known as the United States
It happened quickly.
In the year 2037 the people revolted. Against the political parties, against the Capitol building and Congress, carrying blackened flags and wearing red ties wrapped around their foreheads like some vigilante Army. Once the state capitals also fell, the US military, being under-budgeted and stretched thin around the world following the food drought of 2035, was of little help. That was before the military was disbanded and deeds replaced the law.
(cont.)
That’s it from my writer’s desk today. I hope you keep your chin up. Thank you for being a supportive part of my journey.
Love,
Christina M. Ward