Baby Steps

Baby will be here in less than10 weeks, people. TEN WEEKS. How? It's crazy how fast time has seemed to fly by. I guess I'm getting my first taste of when parents make comments about blinking and their kids are suddenly 18. This looming due date has definitely put living in the present more in perspective for me.



As I referenced in my last post, deciding to "start" or "not quit" right now only has to be about the present moment, and even though I have been motivated since last week to make that a reality, it's still been a hard balance. After all, I am making another person right now. That must mean I do need the 12 hours of sleep I'm craving right? And the bowl of ice cream? And just ONE more episode of ER? (Because you know it always stops after "just one more").

Despite these many digressions, it's definitely been a week of little victories. I'm currently wrapping up my lifetime project of a novel that I started in 4th grade. Tomorrow (or I guess today for those of you reading) should be the last day of writing "draft one" before my 6 week hiatus as prescribed by Stephen King in On Writing. No worries though, I will still be blogging and finishing two of my current short stories before writing one new one in this break before draft two.

I'm getting ready to launch an editing business that has been on the back burner for the past year. In this past week, I have updated my website, set up a plan of action with my school representatives, solidified my services, created a Facebook page, and tomorrow(/today) I will be doing a brief Facebook Live officially announcing the launch of the business.

Finally, I have been continuing to prepare my home and body for the birth of this little baby through scheduling a cleaning routine, going for shorter but more frequent walks, continuing to be on the phone with Amazon about the things from our registry that were missing/broken/lost, etc. (DO NOT do a registry with Amazon. Seriously biggest mistake/headache/disaster I have ever had to deal with...so far).

Although these may seem like little things - and really if you think about how many waking hours I've had in the past 7 days to get things done, it becomes clear how much more I could have done - they are still victories.

These victories made me think of two things. 1) Baby steps! Not just the metaphorical ones that I've been taking this week, but the ones that our little one will be taking soon enough. When babies are learning to walk, they don't really seem to notice how often they fall. They certainly don't seem to care very much at all, and they just keep smiling. The reason they smile is because they are often gazing into a face of unconditional love that stares straight back at them.

Which got me thinking of 2) God. I once heard a priest say that he doesn't give spiritual direction because he believes that God speaks to us through other people in our life. These people we often dismiss as human/biased support rather than divine support. Although I did not appreciate this priest's thoughts during that time and context, it has stuck with me four years later. Why? Well clearly I needed to hear it. It's ok to lean on the people God has blessed me with. The thing with leaning though, is I can't be mad at these people because I'm not leaning on them. I'm the one that has to do the leaning! They can't support me if I don't first take that vulnerable action. Yes. It seems that leaning on others is in fact an action. I cannot continue to stand on my own to feet and complain that no one is supporting me. I need to ask other people to hold me accountable and to support me when I need it, but as the parents of my students used to say: Closed mouths don't get fed! I have to speak up. I have to be explicit. I can't sit in silent irritation when other people can't seem to read my mind.

So here we are week 2 of this motivation high realizing that baby steps are still steps and worth celebrating, and I must have the humility to lean on both the people God has blessed me with as well as God Himself if I am to succeed at my current endeavors. What have your baby steps been this week?