Go Streaking!

I find streaks extremely motivational. I am at a 300 day step streak on Fitbit. My goal is 13000 steps a day. This means I am doing at least 6 1/2 miles of physical activity daily. This keeps me at a reasonable fitness level, though I could be doing better in that regard.

Part of my motivation, always, is inspiration. Clearly, this is the positive side of the streak. The other part that motivates me is fear. Fear that I will miss a day and lose my streak. It may not sound like a big deal, but I’m a “know thyself” person. The last time I lost my streak, I didn’t get back on it for three months. So the concern is not losing the exercise for a day, but for weeks or months.

My second streak is here. I am on a 150 day steak posting to my blog. Sometimes it is a struggle: I don’t want to post crap content. That’s why I always have my eye out for a good picture. If its a day that I’m not likely to be able to write an article or poem, I am hopeful one of my nature pics is at least a nice glance for my followers and viewers.

This streak definitely motivates me to write more, to try to figure out a topic that I think is interesting enough to publish. I’ve also given myself permission to write fast. My past is full of time I spent editing, which now I feel may have been better spent publishing.

Reading from “Hidden in Childhood”

I read the poem titled “The Girl Who Should Have Been a Boy” by Alethea Kehas, who writes at The Light Behind the Story. This was at an event in Hartford called “Other People’s Poetry.” The rule is that you can’t read your own poems, so I was happy to read from this magnificent anthology.

The anthology is available here. Thanks as always to Gabriela Marie Milton for publishing this wonderful book.

Milestone!

I’ve reached another milestone on my publishing journey!

Four-hundred books! (That felt good to write out.)

Strangely, I have to force myself to celebrate this accomplishment. Part of the problem is that my publishing dreams have been so huge since I was a child, that it is hard for any reality to measure up.

What I’ve been doing is imagining them stacked up in forty piles of ten. Picturing this gives a geometry, a mass to what it means to have this many books out in the public.

This has been followed by, I think, a better visualization: 400 people actually owning and reading my book. That was what the dream was always about, if I strip away fantasies of amazing stardom and best-selling status.

People reading my words. What I have always wanted. What I am finally achieving.

Need a copy? Buy yours here: Tao of Thoreau – just 2.99 Kindle and 4.99 paperback.