Kids and Persistence

The view from my hotel room as I wrote last weekend.

I'm deep in the rewriting cave this next month. I wasn't happy with the manuscript for Full Force the secret to Full Circle. So I dumped a ton of words and started over. It hasn't been easy. I don't like doing it but the book even in the rough stage it's in right now is already better.

Writing and editing a book while promoting another requires patience planing and a real talent for organization and coordination. Skills that I've been perfecting for over three decades and still have yet to perfect.

In the end I'm making list and hoping to make list or maintain my spot on list. While churning out words in hopes that when I hand them over to my editor they're won't be too much blood shed come editing.

This morning as I got ready for work I spotted a red slip of paper. It was out in the open not hidden but it hadn't been presented to either myself or my husband. Clearly in large letters it bore the name of my younger daughter.

It was a note about her reading. The teacher was making a plea to her to do better. Because you see she can do better. However, she doesn't put in the effort unless she feels it's necessary, sometimes. And she's been busy reading, I see her but much like her father and if I'm fair myself if she's interested she's all gun ho.

If she's not. Oye!

This morning as I brushed her hair. I explained to her why it was important for her to put in the time and effort and not give up. Especially if as she says the computers they use are messed up. I told her to report and show the teacher what was happening.

It's all well and good to whine and play victim for a minute. Everyone needs to have a pity party so they know what it's like but what the kidlet had to learn today and what I needed to remember was that persistence can be a learned behavior.

Most of us have that drive deep down within. It can get buried. It can get hidden. Especially when no one in your group of friends recognizes the pity party for what it is. So I made her repeat what has been my mantra for a long time. It's been my family mantra though not in the same words.

"Over, under, around or through! One way or another we'll make it through.

One step at a time. 

One foot in front of the other."

It may not be much, but it's enough to remind me that obstacles are simply that obstacles and the way forward is really straight. More often than not you have to do what you would prefer not to do in order to achieve your goal. It was a lesson I haven't forgotten but needed a little reminding on. And, so did she.