Today I want to try something different, today I am going to do a timed writing session using a prompt that I chose from my magical bag of writing prompts that Lauren Fleshman gave each participant during the Wilder Alumni Lab she hosted last year.   The purpose of this challenge is to resurrect my writing practice so tonight I am going to do just that, practice.  Honestly, left to my own devices I never seem to find time to write.  I’ve tried a few guided on-line writing programs, but I eventually lose my way.   The idea of this challenge is somewhat overwhelming tonight, but I am committed to seeing this through.  And even though my inner critic is cringing inside I present to you a 10 minute free write based on the prompt, Instead of Giving Up:  

Instead of giving up: 

Instead of giving up, I choose to get out of bed and to keep moving forward.  One step, one minute, one hour, one day at a time.  The feeling of fear, the anxious thoughts were truly overwhelming; but my job was to figure out the next steps to understand a quickly changing environment and do what needed to be done to protect my residents and my staff from this unknown and unseeable threat known as Covid-19.  

Instead of giving up I learned to shut down and turn the world off when I needed too, to find refuge and solace in tales of other people’s travels and adventures.  To join their pateron groups, follow their YouTube channels and start to dream of a day when I too could camp out underneath the stars, through-hike the Colorado Trail or the PCT or any of the long trails really, to pack up my life in a tiny RV and hit the road.  

Instead of giving up, I pushed forward and figured out if others could so could I.  That I didn’t need to wait for a race or a group trip to plan my own adventure.  That all I really needed was a tent, the ability to start a fire and my own desire to set off into the world. To see life differently, to change my perspective on how I saw things and to not wait for the time and the circumstance to be just right, they will never be just right.  We only grow older, accumulate more things, more debt, more sitting around, more wondering what if.  If this Covid experience has taught me anything, it’s to never give up.  To challenge conventional thinking, to stop saying one day and to start saying today. Today I will go for a hike, today I’ll choose to buy less stuff, watch less TV, spend less time on Social Media and go out and make the life I want to live instead of saying some day…some day might never come. 

Instead of giving up I choose to embrace new challenges, to be open to possibilities and to never assume that I can’t do anything that I set my mind too.