It was August. Kids returning to school, summer vacations winding down, promise of cooler weather, and structure. Oh, how I love structure where activities are neatly packaged and stacked inside calendar squares. In fact, that’s probably why I am infatuated with autumn. Plans are entered on the calendar. Appointments are a scheduled probability not a tenuous prospect.
I learned about the Five-Minute-Friday community’s October event, 31 days of five-minute-writing and felt the relentless pull to commit. Why not? It would mean spending less than 10 minutes out of every 24 hours writing. And wasn’t that my ultimate goal – more writing? So, I committed.
But something happened on the way to the finish line. That structure I coveted became overloaded with every other task and every type of activity, except writing. Finding five minutes to boot up my computer turned out to be the impossible dream. Two out of town trips and one academic class later, I was on overload.
Ten days into the practice, I was out of step with the schedule. I could quit.
In fact, my first inclination was to give up. Just stop!
Then I remembered why I committed to this 5-Minute Friday exercise to begin with.
Discipline.
Discipline is following through. No matter how many roadblocks or twisted pathways encountered on the way. Discipline is going the distance until finished.
It’s interesting that the daily prompt for today was START. I got the message!
To finish, I have to start.
This is a post written for the Five Minute Friday 31 Days of Free Writes 2018.
Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.