One Thing at a Time

“How did it get so late so soon?” ~ Dr. Seuss

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” ~ Mother Teresa

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” ~ Henry Ford

As I was considering my options of what to write about for this post, I remembered something that happened when I was in undergraduate school. A friend of mine was complaining about all the homework she had to do. She was so overwhelmed with the amount of work, that she had let all of it slide. However, it was critical that she begin to get her assignments submitted or she’d fail most of her classes. I don’t know where this idea came from, but I said to her, “Just do one thing at a time. Pick one assignment, concentrate on only that task, then when that’s finished pick another, and so on.” She was relieved and said that was the advice she needed to hear.

That’s the advice I need to hear right now. In my head, I have a feed back loop that I need vast amounts of time to work on one major project and only that project. In my fantasy, I’m happily engrossed in my work with no distractions. But that’s not realistic. I’m happy that I remembered this incident, because I need to relearn to compartmentalize my tasks. I think this has become a problem for me since I quit working full-time and have, seemingly, loads of unstructured time.

The thing is no one ever has just one task that needs to be accomplished in any given day. And long term projects won’t wait until we have vast stretches of time to complete them. So, I’ve begun to do a little bit each day on my novel and the rest. Even if I only spend half an hour on each project per day, that adds up to 150 minutes dedicated to a particular piece of work in a week. When I think of it that way, the time adds up quickly. After a month, I can look back with pride at how much I’ve accomplished.

Thank heaven I’m letting go of that myth. It’s much better to be realistic and compartmentalize my mind, than to allow myself to be paralyzed. That’s a copout. “Oh, I just didn’t have time to write that book, or develop that class.” It’s all about creating something one little piece at a time. That’s how all the great inventions, works of art, even civilizations were and are created.

Whew! I’m glad I got that reminder.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. Welcome to my new followers. Have a great weekend and stay warm, or cool my friends, depending on where you live.

Lucinda Sage-Midgorden © 2019

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Only Jenna joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, instead of traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.

The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news on the audiobook version Lucinda is working on. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.