motivation

I’ve been advised that, until I am writing at least a page a day, I’ll not be considered a writer. I want to be a writer, to some degree anyway. However, for the past year and a half, I have been committed to a few pages a week at most. Much of it has been in the form of this blog. I’ve had all kinds of excuses for not being more prolific in what I have set in my heart to be more involved in. No doubt you use the same excuses in your lives just maybe for different activities. It all really comes down to time, which I believe to be allotted by motivation. I need to be motivated to live my life in some form other than its default setting of busyness.
Consider me motivated. The one page a day thing has taunted me for the past few months. Every time I have the urge to consider myself in part a writer, this haunting reminder comes back and whispers, “How about today? What have you written today?” I hate whispering. It’s rude, especially when it’s a disembodied voice whispering in my own ear. Anyway, today will begin the grand experiment. For the next month I will write at least a page a day. For me that will mean about 500 words each day through March. It won’t all be here in this blog, but I’ll keep an honest update going here.
I’ll have to admit that I was tempted to just begin at the end of the week. It is, after all, the first of March coming up. What better landmark to begin with than the first day of a new month. It’s just another distraction though. I have been motivated today, so I shall start today. I have no guarantees that I’d be driven to begin anything new by the time the end of the week comes. There are too many distractions.
This week alone, I have a conference to be at, a wedding to perform, a teaching time to prepare for and a message to write from the “book of books”. I have meetings, I want to spend time with my wife, I have a daughter to be available for and I have a recently smashed car to continue to repair. I have people who want to meet with me, staff meetings, and of course lunches to fit in somewhere. Did I mention coffee? I need to spend time dreaming, I have a studio with unfinished work lying on a bench, and of course I only survive each day with an early afternoon nap. Let’s see, how much time for a page of writing I wonder?
The previous paragraph may have described your life as well. If it does, even just a bit, I’d invite you to join me. Fight the urge to live according to the urgent. Pray for the motivation to at least alter course for a critical point in time. Pray and then keep watch for a way up and out of the pit of urgency. Your motivation can come at anytime. It can be found in the face of a child. It may appear during a phone conversation with a friend. It may be drawn in an ad for a play or an art opening, or a concert. It’s there somewhere. Look for it and when it appears, fight the urge to put it off for another more convenient time.