Meet Murphy

Meet Murphy. He’s a special kind of guy who doesn’t quite fit the acquaintance category but definitely doesn’t get put into the friendship realm. He’s like a house guest that you try to ignore because when you look at him he engages you in a long, drawn out conversation without focus. You see, Murphy’s last name is Law.

And if you look him up, you’ll find  he lives at the anything that can go wrong, will go wrong address.

A little over a week ago I wrote about being intentional with your time and I suggested an exercise in writing down your day to see where your time goes.

My exercise went like this:

I met a friend to walk the farmer’s market and eat breakfast. This took all morning. Considering I hadn’t seen this friend in over a year, this makes complete sense.

Then I headed home to work on writing. Except I got a call to pick up wax paper and crisco for my husband’s baking project. This should have been a warning to hide out somewhere out of sight but I missed it.

By the time I got home, my husband was on his second attempt of his cappuccino cake. I handed over his missing items and set up shop to write.

Couple sentences in I was asked to help mix something…

Let’s just make this story short and say baking at over 9,000 feet of elevation can do some wacky things. Six attempts later, my husband had a finished product to take to his work’s pot luck and I had two, two sentence paragraphs written. (To be fair, my husband also made a cake for the family, so he made two cakes. Yum=)). I closed my computer and gave up for the day.

Why? Not because I couldn’t have written more but because, at a certain point, you must breathe and accept life will throw you curve balls. Plus, I fully believe in Stephen King’s view on this. He says:

“In truth, I’ve found that any day’s routine interruptions and distractions don’t much hurt a work in progress and may actually help it in some ways. It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl…” -Stephen King On Writing

So the thing isn’t to be hidebound to a schedule but to have a schedule but not beat ourselves up over the distractions that will happen.

Instead, keep the goal in mind with the steps to get there. A goal without steps is, after all, just a dream. So have the goal and steps and, when Mr. Murphy interferes, tell him ‘that’s nice’ and get back on the horse the next day.

Persistence is the thing I’ll add to being intentional. As William Feather said: “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.”

So here’s to hanging on and striving toward our dreams, I mean goals=)

Jennifer