That Little Thing Called Time

Still alive, I see. And finally coming back to post something.

2018 brought me a lot of things I had only ever dreamed of. It was amazing to see God act in every area of my life. It's still hard to recognize that 2018 is OVER. It's done. And we're not getting it back again.

Part of me believes that 2018 was my busiest year ever. Let's list a few things from those 365 days, shall we?
~ I completed my undergraduate degree and graduated college.
~ I gave birth to our first child.
~ We moved our family to a new (and bigger!) apartment to accommodate our growing family.
~ I stood as a bridesmaid in one of my best friend's/cousin's wedding.
~ We celebrated our first wedding anniversary.
~ I finished writing Spindle Dreams.
~ I won NaNo (again) by adding 54K words onto The Twelfth Kingdom.
~ I helped my parents move out-of-state over Christmas break.

Looking back, I feel like I accomplished a lot of things. I remember a lot of fun times with family and friends, rough days finishing up my degree while 9 months pregnant, long nights learning how to mommy, and sweet moments with my husband. I was busy. I got a lot done, right? Not enough.

I also remember all the lazy moments and wasted hours from 2018. I think one of the biggest things I learned last year was that being busy isn't the same thing as being productive. I had a lot of goals for myself at the beginning of 2018. I don't think I fulfilled even a quarter of them. Instead, I binged my way through postpartum recovery with episodes of Cake Boss, Counting On, Love It or List It, and House Hunters. I scrolled through hours of Pinterest instead of writing another 500 words on one of my WIPs. I read and reread Facebook posts by the dozen instead of putting a couple dozen words together for a blog post. Confession: Tasty videos are super addictive.

I wasted a lot of time.

Now, I'm not saying any of these things are bad. I don't consider TV shows and social media to be immoral; too many times throughout the day I found them extremely helpful when needing to contact someone or look up a recipe or look up baby information. I just don't have the greatest self-discipline when it comes to monitoring the time I spend on such sites.

Those wasted moments really come back to haunt you. Let me tell you. I'm sitting here in 2019, thinking of everything I'd wanted to get done but didn't in 2018 and wishing I'd used my time a little wiser. Time is something that, once it's gone, you can never recover. And I don't want to get to the end of 2019 and have the same regrets of wasted time that I had in 2019.

One of the things I'm learning currently is that being profitable doesn't have to mean big goals and time-consuming things. I think one of the biggest reasons why most people fail like 93.876% of their New Year's resolutions is because they set impossible tasks for themselves that are bigger than the state of Texas. Profitability can be writing 500 words a day on a WIP. It can be putting together a 250 word blog post. It can be editing one chapter of another WIP a week. It can be any number of small things; the most important thing is that YOU DO THEM.

Yes, I know it's already a week to the end of January, but 2019 is still fresh! And as Anne likes to say, "Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet." This is still a new year with no mistakes in it yet. The only mistake would be to waste it. Let's take it one day at a time, one small goal at a time, one step at a time, and make 2019 much more profitable than last year.

God bless!