Sometimes a Long Road

“So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.”

Sidney Poitier

I don’t know if I’m tired or dehydrated or worried or what my problem is, but I’ve really felt off my game this week.  My plan to write two blogs a day has not borne out and yesterday I wrote no blogs at all.   Today I overslept and got nothing done towards my goals other than reading a few chapters of The Brothers Karamazov.  I suppose I could provide a litany of excuses, some of them valid.  But what’s the point?  I’m either writing or I’m not. 

So, now I’m writing.  It feels good, even though I’m tired.  I probably should just go to bed, but I can’t stand the thought of not writing.  At the same time, I really don’t feel that I have much to say.  I’m doing this as a means of self-discipline more than anything else.  This is the middle of the journey.  This is the hardest part in some ways.  I’m not filled with the enthusiasm one often feels at the beginning of a quest of journey.  Nor do I have the satisfaction one has when reaching the end of the journey. 

I’m in the middle.  There’s no point in going back, because I’m halfway there.  But, yes, I’m only halfway there.  If I turned around, I could go home and sleep.  But then I would have wasted all my time.  All the ground I gained would be lost and the trip would be meaningless.

When I went to Monterey a few weeks ago, I almost turned around.  The trip wasn’t much fun and it took longer than I thought it would.  I was cold, scared and tired.  I overslept on the second day and I missed most of the event, the reunion, that was my reason for going.   Still, I managed to see some old friends and even make a couple of new ones.  But I don’t want to do that trip again, unless all the conditions are just right.  On this trip, the conditions were not right and I came very close to just going back.

I don’t want to go back with my writing though.  I don’t want to stop.  I’ve covered so much ground.  This will be my 258^th blog.  That’s just such a seemingly arbitrary number…258.  But it’s not arbitrary.   It represents over 500 pages of writing in less than a year.  It represents at least that many hours, over 100 days.  This may be one of my most amazing accomplishments, to have this much consistency, despite the doubts and the self-doubts.

That’s really all I have to say tonight.  If this were a journey that took weeks or months, then this week I might say that I haven’t covered as much ground as I usually do.  Or maybe I did.  I’ve written seven blogs this week and it’s only Thursday.  I was hoping for more, but I’m still ahead of where I was at this time last week.  It’s sometimes a long road, but that’s okay.

I just have to Get Started and Keep Going….and come back tomorrow to do more.