My Word Workout

Excuses Exposed

No one knows better than I do how lazy I've become over the past several years. After years of struggling to live an active life despite health problems, I developed another one that finally brought me to my knees. Well, actually, it knocked me out cold and I've allowed myself to live in a literal state of unconsciousness for the past few years. There is a difference between settling for and accepting what life gives us. When we settle, we resign ourselves to living with the condition and not trying to move beyond it. Accepting means that we face it head on and continue to work toward overcoming it.

I've allowed myself to get into some very bad habits over that time. While I did need to slow down and listen to my body more, I did not have to become complacent and use my health as a reason to fail to complete things, be late most of the time or just plain not do what I needed to do at all. "I can have a full time job or I can have a clean house, but not both" became justification for my excuses.

Last night I proved to myself that I can indeed do what I need or really want to do with very little effort.

Over this past weekend, I wanted to write. I had a short story in progress for one of the contests. I do not normally write fiction. I've been trying the prompts and the first piece I wrote was a lot of fun. I decided to try it again for a contest with a prompt. I planned to finish it this past weekend but there were several obstacles.

First, on Saturday morning we needed to have the telephone company come and check out why the phone was full of static and why our high speed internet was acting like dial up. I could not get online for a good part of the day.

Second, the day before, my wrists and arms began to swell up and itch and by Saturday morning swelling and red welts were all over my body. My forearms looked like Popeye the Sailor Man. Since this had never happened to me before, I decided to go to Urgent Care although there was an extra charge for coming in on the weekend. That was a surprise because I thought that's what they were there for. It turned out to be an allergic reaction to something I had eaten. I do not have food allergies that I know of and the cause is not yet known. Despite having a shot and a prescription, it took 24 hours for the swelling to go down and I am still itching - and not sleeping because of it. The trip to Urgent Care involved several hours that I had not budgeted for in my schedule.

Third, we had high winds on Sunday that kept knocking the power out, so I was afraid to have the computer on and put it at risk of frying due to a power surge.

Fourth, after work on Monday I came home and did laundry and the floors besides taking care of my two dogs and two cats, and relaxed the rest of the evening, telling myself I could finish the story tomorrow.

Fifth, yesterday was an even worse day at work and I worked four hours overtime. Even though I knew that I didn't have enough time to do a proper job, I did want to get the story in. Plus, I still had to figure out how to do a bitem link since this is my first contest submission. The deadline was at 11:59 p.m. and I got it submitted at 11:58 p.m.! I'm not concerned with winning anything. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could finish the story, and a review would be a bonus although I know that it could be much better, especially the ending.

But the point is that I got it done. Another excuse disguised as a justification that I have used is that if I can't do it right, I shouldn't do it at all. This may work in other areas of my life, but unless it's a paying job I can probably get around this one with my writing.

Apparently I have proven to myself that if I really want to complete something, I can and will do it no matter what obstacles are in the way.

I wanted to blog this morning and didn't get up early enough. I'm on my lunch break at work right now, watching my excuses float out of the window.