Mary Schiller is on day 6 of her 30-day challenge to follow her dreams. She's rewritten 1,600-1,700 words of her novel and plans to add another 500-800 today, while also practicing French and working on a business project. She talks about impatience with success and why creative work is a personal responsibility, not about chasing validation.
It's day 6. I can hear some doves cooing outside saying, "Good morning, Mary, wake up!" I'm trying. It is Saturday, July 13th, 2024, day 6 of this roller coaster adventure of 30 days of following my dreams. And before I tell you a rather valuable lesson that I have already learned this morning, I wanted to mention that This weekend is a bit nutty around here because tomorrow, Sunday the 14th, is Bastille Day, and Monday is also a holiday, of course, because of the holiday on Sunday. But the Olympic flame is also paying a visit to Paris tomorrow and Monday. It will then circle around other parts of France and land here before the Olympics begin on July 26th. So my husband and I are trying to decide if we want to try to brave the crowds either tomorrow or Monday to catch a glimpse of the Olympic flame. So that ought to be interesting. But the other thing that I wanted to say has to do with creating and sharing what we do. This morning, basically the first thing I did when I woke up was I reread what I worked on yesterday on this novel rewrite, and I realized it wasn't as bad as I it was. But the more important thing that I realized was that it's really just my responsibility to do the best that I can. Then when I share it with people, they will decide whether it's worth reading or not. That's not really up to me. It's like with these videos, you know, I'm putting them out every day, and whether people watch them or not is not up to me. That's not what I'm doing this for. I mean, yes, it's nice to connect with people. I've loved the interaction in the comments. I have appreciated getting some more subscribers and some more views to my YouTube channel, but the main reason I'm doing this is because it's activating my creative force inside myself. It is challenging to me. It's pushing me in some new directions. And it's allowing me to feel creative in a whole new way. So all of that is really the impetus for doing anything creative, it seems to me. It's a form of self-expression, self with a capital S. So if you want to create something and share it but you're nervous about what people think about it, that's really not your concern. Your concern has to do with expressing yourself to the maximum extent and living your life every day from that place. So my plan today is to try to sort out maybe another 500 to 800 words of my novel rewrite, practice some French of course, and I may work on another business-related project that I really want to complete within the next month or so, and it's going to take me a while to do it. So I'd love to get a little bit of a head start on that today. So let's see what happens on day 6, shall we?
I've been cynical, oh so cynical. Never thought somebody could save me from another fall, from another scar, but I'm all healed up —steady. I couldn't see colors, it was all in gray till you showed me every shade. Now I feel like summer on a rainy day, like there's nothing left in my way.
So if I ever lose my mind, I'll be fine, 'cause It is almost 6 PM here today, and this day just flew by. Absolutely flew by. On the writing side, I did manage to continue working on my novel rewrite. I rewrote the next about 800 words, so that was more than I thought I could get done. So this very first part that's now about 1,600, 1,700 words, starting to feel a lot more cohesive, a lot more Oh, I don't know, satisfying, something like that. I don't know, I'll probably feel differently about it when I look at it tomorrow, but for now it's good. My French study was limited to interacting with people in the supermarket. That's just the way it is. I will get back on that tomorrow. What else was on my mind today was that we just want things to happen so fast, don't we? We want quote-unquote success to happen fast, we want to see results fast, we want to know what's going to happen tomorrow right now, you know, it doesn't work like that, does it? With my YouTube channel, for instance, it's one video at a time. With my novel, it's literally one word at a time, and you know, I think that it helps to Remember that it's always one brick at a time. No one ever succeeds at anything quickly, and as we've talked about before, it's not even about achievement or success anyway. It's not even about enjoying the journey. I don't really like that phrase too much. It kind of bugs me. To me, it's more about what am I discovering about myself? And what am I discovering about life itself? Capital L, Life. What am I learning about how you and I operate as human beings? What am I learning about creativity and how that is available to us all the time? There's just so much that we can take from every single day and I don't want to sleepwalk through it. That's one thing that this process is doing for me. It's really waking me up in a major way. So I will be back tomorrow with another episode. Let's see what happens.
