Celebrating Hitting 300!
Nope. Not talking baseball. Although I do love baseball. However . . . Ever since that time my boy Max was catching and I was up, batting lefty, and caught him in the head on my backswing . . . well, suffice to say, I'm benched.
But I have been doing something in secret that now, on this 300th day, I'm Celebrating! Cue the Band!
“...be kind to your fine feathered friends/for a duck maybe some-body’s mo-th-er!”
For 300 consecutive days, midst two moves, construction, vacation, births and birthdays etc. etc. I have completed a poetry prompt ala Bernard Friot's The Aspiring Poet's Journal.
No, I am not going to share any of my poems here, now. (You're safe...for now!}
No, I did not do it alone!
Nor would I ever imagined getting to day 300. And that's what why I'm telling you about it.
Is there something you've been meaning to try, but haven't?
Perhaps a personal goal? Maybe a resolution? Do you keep saying to yourself, as I have/do/probably will again: "I'll start next week" . . . "After the holiday, really" . . . "Tomorrow." . . Tomorrow. . . tomorrow. . . tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . .
What's the Gimmick? Gotta Have Skin in the Game.
Here's what I mean: I committed to the challenge with a friend. The rules of the game were set in writer's blood (aka "Ink"). We pledged to email or text our assignments to each other every day by midnight. Or else...
It's that "Or Else" that made the difference.
Rewards & Consequences: Some folks respond better to positive reinforcement. I've shared previously how my author-mentor-friend the late Paula Danziger bought herself pieces of amber jewelry but...gave them to her editor to hold until she met a deadline. In order to get SE Hinton to write her second novel (after The Outsiders), her then boyfriend waited each day for her to finish her pages. Others reward themselves by putting dollars into a honey pot. (Big bucks!)
Rewards do not work for me. It is too easy not to pay myself. Nor have I yet found a payoff big enough (and attainable) to entice me to do anything...and I mean An-ny-thing!
I need Consequences, penalties, shame. That's what motivates me. Deadlines with consequences. So, in order to insure that I'd stick with the challenge, I set a penalty a miserable embarrassing consequence. I pledge to complete each days prompt and send it to Cindy by midnight. If failed I vowed to donate $50 to Trump's campaign publically--on Facebook. Pre-election that was the stiffest-realistic-penalty I could imagine. One I was not willing to pay and so, I did the work Every. Single. Day. Here's the 1-2-3 of it:
- Set a "realistic" Goal
- Set a "clear" Consequence or Reward
- Set a Timer (The secret ingredient!) Cindy and I devoted 7 1/2 minutes each day to complete the prompts. That's it 7 1/2 minutes. Read. Set Timer. Go.
I was amazed at what we accomplished in 7 1/2 minutes. Having a set deadline and consequence for not meeting was exactly the motivation I needed to stick with the journal, especially through those first couple of days, then weeks, and vacations, and late nights, and yucky prompts. The answer is YES I CAN!
Tomorrow is here. 300 down, 65 to go!
Celebrating 300 Playlist:
- Stars and Stripes Forever played by U.S. Marine Band
- Gotta Have a Gimmick from Gypsy
- Seven and a Half Cents from Pajama Game
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Don't Toss The Baby Out With the Bathwater!
I Googled these...what're Yours??
Happy 2017! It's a new dawn, a new day, a new calendar waiting to be filled with good intentions. Many of us--maybe you, definitely me--are making or have already made resolutions. Since one of mine (which I've already broken) is to be timely, you may already have your resolutions SET. IN. STONE.
If you're open to revision, get out your chisel and read on. If you, like me, having broken many year's worth of good Resolutions, haven't committed yet, read on.
A recent, informal survey revealed how most New Year's Resolutions are intended to break bad habits: Eat Better! Exercise More! Organize! Be More Loving! More Creative! BE More... Better...BETTER. . .
BETTER. BEST. That's what it's all about. Being "Better" or best, THE BEST. Before you go hog wild with the "Out with the old on with the new," while make this year's Resolutions, I'd like to inject one word of caution: BABY
“As in the adage ‘Don’t Toss The Baby Out With the Bathwater!’”
What the heck do babies and bathwater have to do with New Year's Resolutions? To answer that we'll need Mr. Peabody's to set his Time Capsule back to the 1500's.
Back then the term "running water" referred not to tap water, but to naturally running water, i.e. a river or stream. There were no spigots to fill a waiting tub. Instead buckets of water were lugged from a running water source, heated on a stove and then poured onto a tub. Then bathing commenced. Which ends, as you'll see in example #1, with Baby being the last one in the bathwater. At this point, there are two possible ways the baby could have been tossed:
1. Since lugging and heating bathwater was heavy, hard work, baths were infrequent and everyone in the family used the same water based on family rank: the man of the house had First Bath privileges, "followed by other sons and men, then the women and finally the children—last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it—hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."-via mentalfloss.com
Yeah, if the "baby" is a catfish tossing it might be in order...
2. After bathing the baby, someone calls "Mother!" or "Woman!" or screams thus distracting Mom, so she tosses the tub of bathwater with the baby still inside.
Still wondering what baby bath water has to do with resolutions? Here's what:
Traditionally while making New Year's Resolution, we focus on the mucky bathwater and forget about our babies. (Thus New Year's Resolution time becomes "Beat The Crap Out Of Yourself Time".)
It's just past the holidays, the busiest time, the time following a long period of so much MERRY MAKING has totally trashed routine making it easy to think of a kazillion things we should resolve to do better.
WAIT! Before you go making that naughty list and checking it twice. Before you commit to any resolving what-so-ever. I challenge you to do yourself and everyone in your life a favor and make another list, FIRST.
On this First List, write down what you did RIGHT this past year. List everything RIGHT! . . . . OK Everything you DID. Every. Single. Thing. YOU ACCOMPLISHED.
Come on, Chick'n write the list!
THINGS I DID RIGHT LAST YEAR
1.
2.
3. I don't care how slovenly, lazy, messed up, OCD, ADD, RAP, MIA you might think you are, you did DO SOME THINGS right in 2016. (Assuming self-deprecation, I stopped at 3 in the example...This is your list, so LIST ON!)
Now--with this list of "babies" worth cuddling in plain sight--set your 2017 Resolutions. To be sure you don't throw your accomplishments out with the proverbial bathwater. Hug those babies! Embrace them. Celebrate them. If you're please with the way those things turned out. Put them on your new New Year's Resolution list FIRST! Because dang it, YOU DID GOOD!
2017 New Years's Resolution #1
Celebrate What You Did Right, First! and Do IT Again! Hooray Happy 2017!
Don't Toss the Baby Playlist:
- Something Good from Sound of Music
- Auld Lang Syne sung by Susan Boyle
- I Dreamed A Dream sung by Susan Boyle