An Early Anniversary/Birthday Gift to my Wife

To say my wife will feel tremendous satisfaction about this week’s quitting is the understatement of the decade.

I am an organic person. My personality type according to Myers-Briggs is “Introverted” (big surprise there, huh), “Feeling,” “Sensing,” and “Perceiving.” Nothing in that description says structured, organized or planned. To say that this approach, this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, wing-it attitude drove my wife bonkers early in our marriage would be a gross understatement. When I showed up late from work on the farm and told her that things ‘just took longer than I estimated” it drove her nuts. I can’t say that I blame her.

I understand wanting to be able to depend on someone to be where they’re going to be when they say they’re going to be there. It made for some uncomfortable silences and some long car rides as I sped to whatever event we were now late to. People do things on a schedule and the last thing my order-loving wife wanted was for us to always be the last/late ones to these functions. I get it. I did then and I do now. I just had a tough time overlaying that logical conclusion on top of my life and what I did. That’s why this week’s quitting will be so sweet for her.

See, I’ve decided, at least as far as my writing goes, I have to develop and stick to a plan. I have to quit taking this loosey-goosey approach to promoting and spreading my writing around. I’ve come to this conclusion after many, many hours of thinking about how I want this to go but not implementing my thoughts. I’ve come to this conclusion as a result of my overarching goal to reach and hopefully help people in their lives. Finally, I’ve come to this conclusion after what my wife would probably say is nearly 29 years of positive influence from her. We’ll disagree on this last one but it’s okay, I owe her at least a heartfelt “thanks” if for nothing more than her patience with me. After all she’s listened to my wild, half-baked plans and ideas for all those years too.

It’s time to set a schedule and hit some marks in trying to attract an audience. I’ve come a long way (or regressed, however you want to look at it) from the 20-something year old guy who just took things as they came. Especially in relation to my writing I’ve gained a lot of focus and commitment and (gasp) goals. I’ve already laid down a write-daily gauntlet and now have a tweet-daily metric. It’s time to hit some other avenues like Facebook and guest posting in the writing world. It’s time to do all those things and formulate an actual plan and stick to it, not just those wild ideas that come and go in my insomnia or the shower or the commute.

Will I be up to it? Probably not at first, no, and I’m going to have to be okay with that. I have to accept that I’ll suck at this for a while. Promoting, networking and putting myself out there (notice how no one ever wants to be “out there” they always apparently want to just be “here”?) won’t be comfortable but it’s necessary. I’ll need a lot of grace from my friends and followers and fellow writers but I’m a big boy, I imagine I can take it. Wish me luck.

Ever come to a conclusion that was maybe long overdue? What moved you to it? I’d like to know. If you know someone that might take some encouragement from my maybe-not-so-bold step, please share this with them.

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