Nov 26 2008
Apologies and promises
I’ve been a bad blogger.
I haven’t posted anything new here in days, breaking the cardinal rule for serious bloggers, and alienating anyone who’s been trying to follow this regularly.
My husband, who has two blogs of his own (middleofnowhere.today.com and dadinreallife.com), writes for both of them every day without fail, even if it means writing at 11:30 at night.
I could blame the cold I’ve been fighting (see previous posts), or the 25 centimetres (that about 10 inches for Americans) of snow we got over the weekend, or the deadline that just passed at work, but we all know that I could have found a few minutes to write in there somewhere.
So, I’m sorry. I can’t promise I won’t do it anymore, but I can promise to try to change my ways. I’m hoping to increase the amount of time spent doing productive things (making the kids’ lunches before going to bed, folding the laundry or writing my blog, for example) and decrease the amount of time spent doing unproductive things (watching TV, mostly).
I recently read an article in Canadian Living magazine about a woman who decided to do something good every day for 50 days. You can read it here.
She promised herself that she would not repeat the same act (or at least, wouldn’t count it as her good deed for the day) and that she would do them without expecting anything concrete in return.
Her results were very interesting, and it’s made me think about doing something similar, but I want to give it my own feel.
For one thing, my older son will be “swimming up” to Cubs next fall, and there he’ll be expected to do a good deed every day, so we might need to work it into the routine at Beavers. Maybe a project for just the older boys who will be moving up.
But I’ve also noticed how powerful making a promise to yourself can be. My husband’s promise to himself to add to his blog daily, this woman’s promise to do a good deed, and the promise I’ve been trying to make to myself about exercise, they’re all leaves on the same tree.
When you make a promise to yourself, there is no-one to let down but yourself, but isn’t that the last person you’d ever want to do that to?
But a promise to yourself, broken, is so very debilitating. I’ve disappointed myself so many times. Yet I love me no matter what, so I keep encouraging myself, too, to get back to everything.
Kudos to you for trying! And I wish it would snow here! That would be great!
Oh, and thanks for checking out my blog. I think I’ve read one of your husband’s, the middleofnowhere one.