following through

Going back and reading through the past four or five years of having this here blogger, I realize I MASSIVELY FAILED at more than one of the blog-posting goals I had set up for myself. No, I'm not talking about the building of my own website because, frankly, that's definitely a priority that shifted, changed, and is no longer of importance to me. And I admitted it. In black. In white. On here.

So now here I am, waiting for the green light to leave CleveOH to head back to EriePA, thinking about some of my smaller failures over the past four-five years. Some of my more easily rectifiable failures. Which led me to think about how the power is in my hands - especially when it comes to my writing space. And my life space. And my workspace. And my brainspace.

I am embarrassed with myself because I did not follow through on two of the writing/blogging goals I had thought would be relatively facile for me get done. I am embarrassed because I cannot stand it when people in my life say they are going to follow through on something, then don't. I am well-known for my follow-through, but if I'm being honest with myself here, and of course you, my readers, I've also had my fair share of flaking out on things over the past years.

In the past, if I was unable to follow through with something, I usually did not have a problem accepting that sometimes I was unable to fulfill a commitment and let the person depending on me know that I was unable to fulfill said expectation. Then directing dependent person to other resources that could better fulfill their needs. It was also not as difficult for me (as it obviously has been over the past few years) to admit that I needed an extension or simply needed help in fulfilling expectations and following through on what I said I would do.

I'm trying to rebuild, reconstruct, patch up, whatever you want to call it - this characteristic of my self that I used to hold in such high regard because it was one of my best qualities, and I still hold it in high regard - even though I see I dropped the ball quite a bit over the past few years.

And while I'm disappointed with my self for doing that, I can't go back and change it per se, I can continue to improve and ideally prove through consistent demonstration, not only for others, but also for myself, that I am able to follow through, admit my missteps, accept responsibility, ask for help, change the situation(s), etc.

I am now, out in the open forum of my blog, admitting and accepting responsibility for this lesser quality I allowed to rear its ugly head in my life for a few years, and in response, have been proactively working on said lesser quality for several months now.

I still make missteps in my life, A LOT of them, but I learn from them, and change them, or work to change them - instead of saying it's life circumstance or that I have no control or any other number of excuses I know I've made - because I do have control over my choices and decisions.

This post was meant to more or less keep to my blog failures, but we all know it's also correlated to my real life.

Enter building blocks.

I'm going to redirect this post back to aforementioned blog failures. My two big blog FAILS over the past four-five years are: 1. Timeline - I still have two decades to finish posting.; 2. Self-Statements - Of the one hundred I said I would post, I only posted ten. TEN?!?! Really?!?!

If I calculate the completeness of each of these failures, I only achieved 33.33% of Timeline; 10% of Self-Statements. If I was graded or reviewed on these, they would definitely be considered failing scores.

I can't change the pre-existing failures, but I can do some extra credit by finishing and achieving these two blog topics that I've meant to complete because I want to and have wanted to...but for some reason, had not gotten around to doing. We all know I don't sleep much, so I can't say that I don't have time. That's a bullshit excuse.

This is one of the big changes I'm in-process of better understanding the motivations behind, dealing, and thus confronting head-on this year. No matter how uncomfortable I am.

Not just with the blog, but in all facets of my life. Taking ownership back, following through, asking for help when I need it, knowing when I am simply unable to fulfill an expectation or need to put it on hold, and then communicating that to any other parties involved.

That said. My two blog failures are going to be successes this year.

Time to get back on the road again...