Near Mint Mill

Had an unexpected week off from the blog last week. It’s been a hellish last few months for me and am just getting back into the normal swing of things. It’s hard to come up with something coherent when you have nothing on the brain and yet also everything. So I’m thinking this one will be about progress.

Some people can set a goal and immediately start on achieving it. Others set a goal and go ‘now what?’ A lot of people would mark their progress by how many goals they achieve. For the rest, we need to break that down into little bite sized chunks so that the weight of the whole goal doesn’t destroy our drive.

Part of the way to achieve that breakdown into more manageable pieces is getting a schedule under control to help you out. Remember to make the schedule manageable. Don’t start big or immediately make it impossible for you to achieve.

Want to get in shape? Start by just walking around your place for five minutes every hour. Up and down a hall or if you can complete a small circle passing through rooms, even better! Once that becomes too easy you can go for short walks outside. Slowly escalating the time and distance until you reach that comfortable level.

You decided to write a book by the end of the year? Make sure you write something every day. There will be days where you can bang out a page, or even more! Don’t be discouraged when you get days where you can’t come up with anything. Those big days carry you through the bad ones. Just make sure that even on the bad ones you write something. A single sentence or line is something and works towards getting to that end goal.

Life smacked you sideways and you’re questioning your own health? Talk to someone. Let them know what’s going on. Get help if you need it. Whether it’s someone’s job or they care about you because they are a family, friend or coworker they will be willing help you, as long as you talk to them. By getting help you will work with others to get a plan figured out for your recovery and they will be keeping an eye on you to make sure you are progressing in your recovery.

Because! And here is the really important part, you live with yourself every minute of every day of course you aren’t going to see your progress. A watched pot never boils and all that. But! As long as you are making sure you do the bite sized chunks as per your schedule I can guarantee you that you are making progress. Even if you don’t see it sometimes, others around you do.

I had my first full week back and work last week. Come Saturday I was wiped, as in I didn’t want to get out of bed all day. The important thing here is that I made it through the work week. Even if I personally felt like I barely scraped through it, I made it. I had to be told how much of a significant progress that was considering I had been pretty much flat on my back for nearly the last four months. I felt terrible Saturday but I made it through the whole week. It wasn’t perfect but I did it.

What I’m getting at is that no matter how you feel about your progress you are making it as long as you are putting in some sort of effort. Start small, work your way up. Talk to family and friends and they will be your greatest cheerleaders in inspiring you to your goal. At least that’s been my experience these last few months, because even with everything I went through I stuck to the one thing I promised I would and that was to write something everyday. That kept me going even when I hit rock bottom. As I recovered I added more and more to my schedule of things to do each day and now I’m on my way back up. Not there yet but I have my cheerleaders and I will get there.

And yes it’s not lost on me that I’ve named this segment “Rayne: A Work in Progress” and this one is about viewing your own progress.