Last day of ‘real summer’, back-to-school is hours away …
Yes, Labour Day is a revered, respected holiday.
Or, a working day if you let it …
Today or tomorrow, when the starter’s gun is fired, what gets you from here to the finish line?
Are you proving something to others, or improving yourself for yourself?
Nothing to prove, or everything to prove ~ sometimes both at once?
Storm clouds of summer, in the rear-view now. What’s ahead is a wall of heat, energy, and possibility; no perfect map, but sitting still gets me nowhere.
This was a summer of discontent and distraction. Dissatisfaction too. Easy to say I regret it, or wish for a do-over. But that’s cliché, and it’s avoidance.
Today is a working man’s holiday. As a self-employed person, I am both master and grunt, executive and assembly line worker, boss and self-assistant, doing the heavy lifting and the sweeping up. It means often working when the world rests. Sometimes it’s time to take on a new opportunity. Sometimes it’s a duty. Sometimes it’s survival.
And, for those writing hobbies, it’s the discipline of publishing every day, no matter what else is going on. Time for the novel seems to get shortchanged too often …
Labour Day can be for launches.
As can any Monday. And this Labour Day it’s also for doing Monday things, first of the week things, 1st of the month things too.
Today I’m opening drawers of stored ideas.
Risky ones, unpolished ones, the kind that scare me.
That’s work worth doing.
Uncertainty will always be part of this ride.
Everyone stumbles, everyone trips. Too many people slow down or park themselves in “place-holding” stages, convinced their best days are behind them.
They are not.
Yours are not.
Mine are not.
My inner critic says, “Mark, don’t do this paragraph - it’s bragging and self-promotion.” Yes, but it’s included because each of these things was a little idea that each had a ‘first day’, a first issue - had a reason that kicked them into gear from ‘idea to action.’
I’ve published Musings every day for more than 22 years, FACILITYCalgary every week for 26 years, and Monday Morning Minute for nearly six. That rhythm doesn’t stop because a calendar says “holiday.” My point is that what succeeds and what falls by the wayside or ends in the trash heap - will never be known if the best of us sits in a drawer, never tried, never launched.
My prompt, my elbow-in-your-ribs today - as a gentle reminder, is this:
If you’ve got an idea, a venture, a deal, it’s in a file or stored in some corner of your brain, and that idea is waiting for “someday,” that day could be tomorrow, but why not today?
Harry Truman once said, “I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.”
That advice works just as well for us when we stop pretending we have nothing to prove.
Forward momentum involves risk, failings, falling and getting up again - rarely fatal, but to be safe, when we fall or fail, we should fall forward … progress is sometimes not one-step-at-a-time or one-day-at-a-time, it’s one fail/fall after another. Why not?
If you think you’ve nothing to prove, prove it anyway.
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Returning this week:
REITrag
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