Last week I turned 42.
I had THE BEST DAY, filled with all the things I love most in the world:
Family
Friends
Contemplation
And best of all, karaoke
I’m sitting at birthday lunch with two of my best friends, and because I’m a goal-setting kind of a girl I said, ‘I want to make this the year I publish something every day.’
(This was 8 days ago, so you can see what a blockbuster start I’m off to)
My beautiful friend said, ‘What if you made it the year you did less? We are all about more, but what if you could do more LESS?’
MINDBLOWN
So I didn’t publish anything that day, or the rest of the days after until today, and I also told myself, ‘You will not beat yourself up about this, either.’
Instead, I gave myself some grace to do a little less. I slept in (one morning until almost 9!). I chose fewer, more important things to focus my energy on. And already, I feel like my year is off to a pretty stellar start.
AND…
This morning I got an email from a business called ‘Just Get Out Of Town.’ They teach travel hacking stuff, and I had purchased their book about 2 months ago and then never even opened it up. :/
The email led with the question: How much do you think a penny would be worth if you doubled its value every day for 30 days?
I just fact-checked the email with ChatGPT (or as I like to call it, Chatty G) and guess what: $5,368,709.12
Consistent action compounds.
And I know this from my own life because in 2019 I committed to running every single day. Eventually that turned into ‘exercise every day’ because of a foot injury… but I can count on two hands the number of days I haven’t intentionally moved my body since making that choice. And it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
So today, a week and some change into my 42nd year…
or is it my 43rd? I just asked Chatty G and they have confirmed it’s my 43rd year. Am I getting too reliant on ChatGPT?
…I’m on the search for the next thing I can commit to that will compound like daily intentional movement has compounded for me.
And when I think of what that could be, the first thing that comes to mind?
Writing.
I love writing, and it has been a passion and a special gift of mine for as long as I can remember. My childhood efforts were adventure novels about orphan girls adopted by princesses (duh). As I emerged into adolescence it turned into screenplays (Grease 3, anybody?). And when I found out I was pregnant for the first time, I started blogging (Meet Baby Dug ogs in the house?). The musings I captured as I fell in love with our first daughter, Hudson, are cherished now as I look back on the Me Before Loss. And I turned even the writing AFTER Hudson died into something I cherish, because I was able to capture what we go through in grief in a way that has helped other parents of babies who didn’t make it into this life for as long as we would like, by publishing the Meet Baby Dub book.
I write every day because of my business, but I haven’t intentionally carved out the time to write what’s going on in life, the memoir-style capture this journey I’m on to evolve and maintain my own identity in the noise of all the roles I play.
Writing helps me process those things.
Sharing that writing may help somebody else process their own internal struggles to be authentic while also navigating a very noisy world.
I’ll win because of the discipline of writing, I’ll win because of the insights I’ll uncover through that process, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll also win by having that publishable book, ‘Work Hard Mom Harder’ some day in the future.
So this is me saying, loud and proud, that I’m here to commit to publishing something new every day. Not everything will be thousands of words, and not most of it will be great, but it will be the DOING OF IT that I grow from the most.
Here’s to the 43rd trip around the sun, and all the blessings to be experienced, to all the BEST DAYS I’m going to have and to all the memories and musings that will be immortalized in the written word because today, I chose to compound the interest of my brain by publishing something new every single day.