The best laid plans…
My Grandmother and Grandfather, Elizabeth and Ross lived in a trailer with the backyard ending in a very large(from my perspective as a child) corn field. We cut through it to go swimming in the creek but it was much more than a obstacle between home and fun. I loved running around in the corn when it was grown, it was very easy to disappear into the field and sit down and you were as isolated as you could be as a kid. I played in the corn, hid from responsibilities, and occasionally took a nap. In the growing period everything was vibrant green and brown, little wisps of corn silk dangling from you as you moved. In the fall sometimes it did not get harvested and it would turn to a pale brown and noisy as the wind stirred it. I learned quickly that the leaves were sharp and if you just charged through they would cut like paper all along your face and arms. So I suppose to some a corn field could be ominous or even hostile but I always look at them as a place to wander off and disappear for a bit. I dont take that opportunity often as an adult, my wandering is more at night along the streets of town as I get my steps in. But Lu & Dag would for sure play in and possibly get lost in one.
This week has been an odd one, nearly no progress and so very little practice accomplished and that’s ok. I have been lost in my own metaphorical cornfield for a bit now. So many crisis points and plans, and commitments that I stayed in the cornfield and just stared up at the blue sky. But I am working on getting back on track. Slowly, one step at a time.
I am finding the size of some of the projects I am working on to be intimidating and it is taking some work to get those in perspective, to see the small steps ahead that will lead towards completion of the overall projects.
I heard something that resonated with me this week. Something I should tell my kids and hope that they would listen. If you are going to put a brick down to build something and you are going to do that over and over again, then do it in the same place so you end up with a house at the end instead of a bunch of piles of bricks. I probably butchered that but the sentiment is there. It’s easy to be scattered, to work on 20 different things at once, to start new projects, to abandon things that are not working. Starting and continuing with a single task though WILL finish the task, maybe not right away but a hell of a lot faster than if you start a new task every time you stall out.
It is easy to think you failed at something but the reality is you probably just slipped, you mis-stepped, maybe you had a setback, lost progress. That is not the same thing as failing.
Just keep going. Everyone that succeeds at anything has that in common. They didn’t stop while they were slipping, while they were messing up. Every person that has a success story also has a story of all the mistakes and setbacks that happened before that success.
Keep going
