A Matter of Perspective

I recently subscribed to a newsletter called “4000 Mondays.” It is created around the basis that we have 4000 weeks (Mondays) in our lives.

The first thing that greets you on Jodi Wellman’s website (Wellman created this site and even wrote a book called “You Only Die Once”) is a message in big, bold letters that says, “Because Life’s Too Short.” This is followed by a brief synopsis of what the site is about.

“Life enhancement stuff for people who want to live on purpose, inspired and totally alive.”

This is where I signed up for the newsletter. It arrives in my e-mail every Monday.

This week her topic was on procrastination. “Are you procrastinating your life?” In previous weeks she has written on these topics, “Can your parents’ regrets be good for you,” and “Tuning into what you want more of.”

Honestly, the procrastination one really resonated with me because I am a procrastinator. If I can pass something off until tomorrow or the next day, month or year, undoubtedly you will find me doing just that!

I am not proud of this fact. But I am also not alone. In fact, September 6 was National Fight Procrastination Day. There are enough people out there that procrastinate that we got our own special day!

Again, I’m not proud of this, it’s just a fact.

What Wellman said was that we have a “tendency to put off our dreams.” 

I know I did. I dreamed of being a published author. I dreamed about it long and hard, but I did nothing about it. Oh, sure I was writing for the newspaper and I was occasionally writing down a stray thought here or there, but I was not doing the writing I had dreamed of doing. I wasn’t writing the great American novel. I was procrastinating my life away.

So earlier this year I decided to try putting several of my random thoughts and writings together. In the end I had four non-fiction books published.

But that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more. So I began to write for Kindle Vella.

Vella is a platform by Amazon designed for serialized storytelling, allowing authors to publish their stories one episode at a time. It caters to readers who enjoy consuming stories in shorter, episodic formats and allows authors to build an audience by releasing content regularly. 

Most of my episodes are around 1000 words. Most of them you  will not find because I write using a pen name for my fictional stories. 

I am writing one Vella currently under my real name. This is one that I have been attempting to write for about two years now. It is not an easy story to tell, hence the long time span that I have been “working” on it.

Now that I have a couple of episodes (think chapters or TV episodes) on Vella I feel obligated to continue writing. Each week I will be adding a new episode to the story. 

The other day I got a pleasant little surprise. I found that one of my fictional stories earned me a small bonus. I guess it must have been read enough times! I was absolutely thrilled! 

I count all this as wins and a way to keep on living for the remainder of my Mondays (I have about 1000 Mondays left).

I want to live those to the fullest, so I am pursuing my dreams. How about you?