Just Keep Pushing

No, I'm not advocating rude subway or bus riding behaviour. I'm talking about pushing through when you don't feel like any progress is being made. This happens to me in so many aspects of my life I feel like I could just write blog posts about only this topic. Sometimes it feels like all I'm doing is pushing but I'm not getting through. Like I'm holding a wall that feels like it's about to topple on me if I don't keep the pressure up against it. And that's exactly the feeling I have when I'm working through the middle of the book which I'm doing right now. And that's exactly the feeling I have when I'm dealing with family/life commitments that I can't possibly attend/deal with because there is a whole section of wall that is about to topple first so I have to let the other side crumble.

The last few weeks and the the few weeks coming up I have/had to:
- miss my mom's birthday
- miss my Uncle's surprise 65th birthday party
- delay getting my daughter's skating program started
- delay cleaning out the old house
- manage Thanksgiving weekend around two hockey games which means we might have our dinner on Saturday night so I can drive four hours on Sunday night (after the hockey game) to surprise my mom with a quick overnight visit from her grandkids, drive back on Monday afternoon, drop off my daughter at her university on the way and get back home by Monday night
- probably miss my husband's annual early extended family Christmas get together on the first weekend in December (another hockey tournament)
- slow my writing down to a painful crawl but still try and maintain some forward motion with a page or two written while waiting for the Boy to finish Tae Kwon Do practices

Yup, the wall is certainly crumbling and cracking but am I about to stop pushing and let the whole thing fall? No. I may not be entirely successful in keeping the wall straight and unbroken but, darn it, I am not going to stop pushing against it because I know if I do that I'll be a quitter and if there is anything writing has taught me is that you can't be a quitter. Not if you hope to succeed in this business. Not if you hope to suceed in completing a novel. Not if you hope to succeed in growing and expanding your own strength of character. Yes, it is hard. Yes, not everything will be perfect. But the beauty is not in perfection - the beauty is in the effort and in the holding on in face of seemingly unsupportable odds.

So for all of us holding on to those walls (or boulders) keep your strength, don't give up, don't give in. The effort will be worth it (and, if all else fails, at least your arms will get really toned).