Last updated on November 6th, 2019 at 12:17 am
Part of my dream process is to clean up my old blog posts on A Week In The Life of A Redhead so the blog represents the best of my writing abilities. There is some real nonsense in those old posts. P.U!
The project is taking longer than I anticipated. This became apparent after I reviewed the first 5 posts. I could see that back in 2005 most of my writing consisted of vomiting a whole lot of thoughts onto the computer–much of it uninteresting dribble.
This is not uncommon for writers. It’s part of the process of clearing everything out in our heads to make room for the real story. It’s a way of sweeping the cobwebs out of our brains. It seems I had more cobwebs than Halloween.
September 2005 had 44 posts when I started – 8 remain. It took me two weeks to go through those 44 posts to delete and improve content. I have 17 months of old posts left. I began blogging to strengthen my writing skills and form a regular writing habit. I liked the Internet and imagined over time the blog could become an idea for a published book.
I didn’t give the process a time frame. Reading the old posts I see how much I’ve needed these years of writing practice. Sometimes our dreams don’t come true right away because we need to get better at them.
Period.
Success coaches tell us that it helps our subconscious to have a specific time frame in which to complete a goal, but how do you get stronger at something without time spent practicing? How do we know how much time to allow?
Experts call this period of practice “the gestation period.” This gestation part of dream achievement is directly proportional to the amount of effort we put into achieving our dream.
If we don’t practice – work at it – set time apart for it – how can we expect the dream will happen?
We need to assess ourselves honestly when looking at allowing time for a gestation period. We need to ask ourselves serious questions, such as
- Do we need to take any classes?
- Do we need a coach?
- Do we need more practice?
- Do we need to find part-time work that will give us exposure to parts of our dream?
- Do we need to save money?
- Is there an area of our life that we need to clean up that might get in the way of the dream?
All of these things can add time to achieving our dreams. Writing 500 words a day will give you a book in a year. Do you have the will power to sit down and write 500 words a day?
Do I?
Theodore Roosevelt once said that “Nothing worth gaining was ever gained without effort.”
Editing 17 months of old blog posts is part of the process – like giving up sugar for those who want to lose weight; practicing daily at the piano to get better; working until 2:00 am over many months to launch new ventures; going back to school to get the better job that will provide the money to go after the dream, waiting for a Toastmasters group to accept an application to join. The list goes on.
Catherine Hughes
Catherine Hughes is the founder, content director and editor-at-large of 8WomenDream. She is passionate about helping women step out of their own way and strike out into a world waiting for their special talents. She’s a published author and a former award-winning mom blogger. Catherine has helped companies both large and small create engaging web content, social media narratives, and unique blogging platforms. She claims to be a redhead, but don’t hold that against her.
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