Just Finish Something!
Honestly, when I began writing what would ultimately become i am Love in 2014, I had no clue what the end result would be. It was a series of conversations I had with my mom that inspired me to begin writing about a five year relationship I had recently ended.
Through those conversations I began to analyze that relationship. I focused strategically on its unresolved experiences and unfulfilled intentions. In doing so I found that there was something about that time in my life that felt very much unfinished. In expressing this to my mother, she challenged me to name something significant that was for my benefit, which I had finished up until that point. In the midst of the long pause I took to consider her question, she began naming things I had started but had yet to finish. And as I sat there listening to her name them, one by one, I began to make up and match excuses for each. But as mothers do, she was not having any of it. She made it clear to me that the excuses I made only robbed me of the necessary accountability to complete what I had started.
My mother then encouraged me to commitment to writing my newly developing thoughts about that relationship down on paper. I didn't have a title or a timeline, just a collection of experiences and ideas. Over the next three months I finished three and a half chapters. But then I found myself in another relationship I wasn't even looking for, this time for almost three years. For two and a half years I barely touched my manuscript. And at the end of that relationship, I began writing again.
On Friday, September 29, 2017, my first book, i am Love will be readily available to the public. Considering the math, it didn't take me three years to write i am Love. Like many others with unfinished intentions, I was preoccupied with life (my relationships) and allowed myself to be distracted from my personal goal of completing a purposed task I had begun. Life and Love both require an adequate amount of focus, experience and time to maintain keen perspective of our goals. Adequate focus keeps us from compromising our goals in pursuit of less significant outcomes. However, when we do veer from our intended path, we are never journeying backwards. Every experience that we encounter in building our awareness is a contribution to the adequate experience necessary to grow. Time is not ours to control, but ours to appreciate. Even times we may consider to be wasted, may someday prove to be vital in our journey to fulfillment.
Maybe you are journeying to complete a purposed task that you've begun and you've found yourself distracted a time or two in the process. Maybe you're a procrastinator like me. Either way, I want to encourage you to know that you have it in you! Life does not always unfold as we plan. However, this is not a reason to quit or to put it off until later. Work toward the mark of completion day by day. And if you happen to find yourself in an unproductive place, do your best to refocus and know that every experience is lending something to your journey.
I say to you, as my mother told me the day I started writing i am Love, just finish something! You might be surprised by what you are actually capable of producing.
Love,
J