Writing in Public, Too: Month 2, Day 6 – The Tao of Dory

So it\’s been a rough week. Was planning a few days off, ended up taking nine instead. Between a job that is eating up WAY more of my energy than I\’d like to some assorted Bad Stuff happening outside of work, I\’ve been tumbling for a bit now. The good news is, I tend to find my feet pretty rapidly. And I think I am back on the right track again now.
Spent most of yesterday trying to write, and not being able to get the energy together to do so. But I wanted to – that\’s a good sign. A little bit like when you\’re ill, and not hungry. Those first hunger pangs are a sign that your body is about well again. That was a bit like my Saturday. And I went to see \”Gravity\” in the theater – which was *awesome* and I strongly recommend it. Go see it in 3D, well worth the extra couple of dollars for the 3D on this one. Very intense film; be prepared.

So today, more of the same. Read a book. Surfed some forums. Would really like to buy a sailboat and head south for the winter, but not going to happen – which didn\’t stop me spending far too many hours window shopping for them anyway. Spent some time with the kids, which is always good.

Finally, around 10pm, I realized if I was going to write ANYTHING today, it needed to be now. So I sat down and wrote the summary for last month.

Then I got cracking, and put 500 words into a story.

That\’s not a lot. But it\’s something – it\’s opening the door back up. I\’ll get more done tomorrow, and more the day after that, and more the next day. And they\’ll add up again, and this will be a good writing month.

Off to bed now, but first, a quick note:

The Tao of Dory

Dory is that cute blue fish from the movie \”Finding Nemo\”. I\’ll avoid spoilers, on the off-chance someone reading this hasn\’t seen it yet. But you should have.

At one point in the film, Dory talks about what you ought to do when bad things happen. She says:
\”Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…\”

*grin*

It\’s a good metaphor for life, folks.

Because bad things ARE going to happen. Unpleasant things. Painful things. We all get hurt. We fall down. We fail. We crash. We get depressed, or injured, or sick. Even broken.

And NONE of those things can stop us if we follow the Tao of Dory: and just keep swimming.

Sure, they might slow us down a little. I lost nine days, just now. I\’m not going to get that writing time back, not ever. But I am writing again now. I got back up. Got my fingers back on the keys. And I\’m pushing forward again.

Just keep swimming.

It is the simplest thing in the world, and one of the hardest to do. Getting back up after we fail or fall is never simple, never easy, but always essential if we want to reach our goals. My feeling is that most of the folks who succeed at anything are not the ones who never failed – they\’re the ones who kept trying through failure after failure.

I stumbled, last week.

We all do, sometimes.

And then we get back up. We shake off some of the dust. We rise, even if we\’re still hurting. We take a step forward again.

And just keep swimming.

Totals for Day 6

Daily Fiction Wordcount: 500 words    Month to date fiction: 500 words

Daily Blog Post Wordcount: 1175 words    Month to date blog posts: 1175 words