When your best isn’t good enough, several emotions and thoughts drift into the mind. The logical thought says you did your best. It should provide a sense of comfort and wellbeing. You did your best, and that’s what counts, even if your best didn’t deliver the contract, award, or other objective. [Read more…] about When Your Best isn’t Good Enough
Work Life
Those Slog Days
Those slog days. Molasses days. Days where the sand never runs out of the hourglass, time never winds down, the day never ends. Dark days. Abysmal days. A dampening of the spirit (despite the sunny with a high of 75°). Gray-tinged, gray-clouded. A slog, both noun and verb.
Slog: (n) a spell of difficult, tiring work or traveling
Slog: (v) 1. work hard over a period of time; 2. hit forcefully and typically wildly, especially in boxing
On the slog days, work becomes a struggle. Revision: perhaps it’s more accurate to say everything’s a struggle. Sleep comes uneasily, if at all. The desirable motion becomes one of hibernation and isolation.
The work gets done — of course it does — and sometimes it comes surprisingly easy. The words still flow despite the morass. Other times, the words reflect the internal condition. They eke, slither into existence. One sentence, delete, rewrite, delete, try again. Over and over, day after day.
The slog. That isn’t the worst of it; the worst resides in a desire to hide away from God. The pressure to work mounts, to get all the things done, and the need to spend time with God diminishes.
The call still flickers, though. It whispers to the slog-laden spirit, and, if the spirit quickens to the second definition of the verb “slog,” it comes. It fights for the daily breaks and daily bread. The spirit cries out for help. It confesses the loneliness and exhaustion.
Every slog-ridden day the spirit hits forcefully. It does not, however, hit wildly. No, it takes aim. It makes a decision about what is most important, and what is most important is always, always God and growing closer to him. Because of that, it stays the course. It commits to the daily work and the life work and pushes through all those slog days.
Image: Death to the Stock Photo
Meticulous
We can find beauty in precision—in a tidy bookshelf or a neatly organized calendar for the month ahead. — Death to the Stock Photo
Quit Saying Yes to Everything
I understand the need to accept assignments and say yes to every opportunity. The need, though, rarely arises because the assignments and opportunities are good. Rather, it develops from a desire for approval, a wish to be liked and accepted.
1 Word for 2017: Growth
I enjoy the concept of “three words for the year” and have employed it in the past. I, however, cannot think of three words for 2017. I only possess one: growth.
Happy Anniversary, Write Right
Write Right celebrates its one-year anniversary this January. (LinkedIn says five, which is correct if counting the years the site and character have been around.) I’ve been in business for a year!