On Momentum, and Finding It Again

I set out to write a blog post every week this year, it’s something I’ve been thinking about doing since I started freelancing back in 2016. At the time, I held off until I felt like I had more experience to share, although looking back I wish I had taken the plunge since I’ve learned that even the process of sharing your inexperience can be valuable.

I made it to about March or so this year writing weekly posts, then missed a week and decided a biweekly pace was easier to sustain. Then in September, our beloved dog passed after a stressful week of emergency vet visits. She was older so her passing was something we knew was an inevitability, but as with so many things, we thought we would have more time. Shortly after that and on the heels of grieving our pet, we both came down with Covid, knocking us out for another week, plus the weeks following of foggy brain and fatigue. When it rains it pours.

The end result was cancelled plans left and right, goals put on pause, and daily routines disrupted while we figured out our new normal. And during it all in the back of my head was this nagging realization that I was leaving my blog neglected. I missed one blog post, then a whole month passed, then another month. I gave myself grace and said I would start back up on November 1 with an amazing, breath-taking work of genius to make up for the lost months, but that date came and went and I still hadn’t written a post. I had officially lost my momentum.

So today, in an effort to rekindle that momentum, I’m writing a post. I had only a loose topic in mind, and I told myself it could be as short as a sentence, but that I had to post something today. So this is my post, it’s not perfect and it probably won’t win any awards, but it’s the first step towards building the momentum up again.

And I think that’s a really good lesson about goals. Consistency is great, but it’s equally as important to give yourself grace when you lose the consistency. And when you’re ready to get it going again, don’t set the bar too high. If you find yourself saying, “I’ll do it this week, I’ll get back into it” and missing that target over and over, take a hard look at where you’ve set the target. For me, I just needed to lower the bar a little and give myself permission to write something short and imperfect.

If you’ve read this far, thank you, it means a lot to me. Here’s a picture of Pixie, our sweet girl who passed in September.