It’s been a while.
The end of the year rush got the better of me, and as the [almost] sole writer for this website, I ran out of time to keep up with stories week by week.
But I’m not making excuses. At least, I’m not trying to.
For those of you who keep up with Secret People, thank you. It’s your devotion that keeps me going. Also, I’m sorry to have let you down these last couple of months as I’ve struggled to come up with new content.
I was sitting at Octane today, a coffee shop in Atlanta, working on goals for the new year. It feels so trite, I hate doing it, but the older I get, the more I see the actual value of setting goals. I see how necessary it is in my desire to becoming a better person, breaking old habits, and becoming an altogether healthier person. As I did this exercise, Secret People came to mind and I felt this blerg feeling in my stomach. It has been so. long. How do I even begin again?
The answer is I just do. As with many things, if not most things in life, we (I think I can say we here) struggle to keep up with our routines and the things we ought to do that aren’t absolutely required. When you don’t get one job, you have to keep going so you can eventually get a different one. When we fail to workout, we have to decide to start again. When we stop reading, stop doing something we want to do, we have to pick it up again. When we ignore our resolutions and goals, we can start over.
It’s maybe the hardest thing I’ve had to learn lately. I look at my bullet journal and I see all the things I haven’t done, and they haunt me. The reminders on my phone just linger there like a red numbered spot of shame. I wake up in the morning tired and I go to bed way too late feeling as though I haven’t accomplished anything that day. As much as I want to be Chris Traeger with his optimism, and most of all, his energy, it turns out I’m not him — at least not right now (2016 goals!)
But for now, for the days I don’t have the energy and feelings of failure loom in the labyrinth of my mind, I have to begin again. I have to keep going.
All that to say, we have new stories for you, coming next Tuesday.
Image used courtesy of Luke Price under creative commons license: http://bit.ly/1n19QS8