Making It Harder ...

I keep making things harder for myself than they need to be. Like that fiction number I was trying to hit. The one that there was no way I was going to make it because it was way too many pieces. Then I realized I wasn't counting some things I'd written so it was just too many pieces instead of way too many. Then I realized I miscounted last year so there was one fewer there than I thought and suddenly it was a stretch but totally doable. That fiction number.

Last night around 2 am (I'm in an insomnia stretch right now and oh boy are they fun) I was thinking that I wasn't counting a couple of things I wrote for Dana that totally should count. They were part of the Books series and there were two sections that I wrote and sent to her but then rewrote to actually fit into the story. I wasn't counting those things because they weren't part of the story any more. BUT I still totally wrote them. Sometimes there are things that Dana gets to see that never get published anywhere else. And a lot of them are things like that. Work through it pieces. But working through things is still working.

After adjusting and counting and looking at all of the work through it pieces I sent Dana and deciding which ones counted and which ones didn't (if the majority of the WIP piece ended up in the actual piece it didn't count, but if I basically rewrote the whole thing it counted) and redoing the math and tallying up what I've written over the past couple of months, to match what I did last year I need...

One more fiction piece.

That's it. Just one.

I was making it so hard for myself by trying to discount what I had done.

How many times do we do that to ourselves? Personal and professional lives. We aren't where we want to be, or we are taking a path that is different than most people take, and we totally don't give ourselves credit for what we've done.

The work is the work. Even if you feel like you don't have the end goal to show for it just yet. The point is to just keep doing the things you need to do. Keep doing that foundational work. Keep heading toward the goal you set, even if it looks like you have doubled back a few times, you get credit for all of that doubling back. No matter how many times you walk up the hill, you walked up the hill each and every time. Not just once.

Give yourself credit for the work. All of it.

And one more thing...

Now that I know I only need one more piece to match last year's numbers, and I know I won't be counting like this next year, how many pieces should I do before the end of the year?

Kidding...

You know it will be at least two.