Not too long ago I created a blog. Obviously it was a secret because I haven’t written on it or amassed a wide following. Like many projects of mine it sounded good in theory but impossible to come up with, so here it goes.
As many of you know I have a fixation with fashion. Again this is probably something else that has been in secret because I far from dress like it, but I adore clothes and especially shoes. Particularly the kind I can’t afford, but where there is a will there is away. Besides, my lack of funds for a Tiffany blue silk bag or the latest Antik Batik leather and suede purse is just a brief passing, because I’m a writer.
Now my writer friends out there will laugh because at the moment I don’t know any writer that is swimming in Prada, but if it happened to a single mom on unemployment then why can’t it happen to me? And honestly why isn’t it happening now?
This is the question that eats at me. I have begun to call it the NOW factor. In a world of instant gratification it is hard to deal with the fact that NOW isn’t how a writing career happens. One can’t sit down at the computer pound out a 100,000 word manuscript, dial up Harper Collins, and yell stop the presses I have written a masterpiece and it is only noon!
I am realizing that making NOW happen takes many hours of labor and discipline. Discipline is the kicker. To write 100,000 words you have to do it every day even when you hate it and you think it is crap and yes even when you read it to a friend and they say they hate it and think it is crap. That is when NOW seems like never.
It was on one of those never days that I was flipping through the May issue of In Style magazine. I love In Style for many reasons, mostly because it is not full of annoying stories it is pages and pages of clothes. There I came across the new spring length, the midcalf skirt.
As I looked at the picture and read the comments about how it can work for anyone, it made me think about how we all struggle for middle ground. I myself am constantly trying to find that way to do it all be it all see it all and after all that try to work full time and start a writing career. I am working toward that skirt in all aspects of my life, not to short not too long but just right and just me. Here are some things I have learned about hitting midcalf.
· Midcalf means it works for you. Sometimes this can be difficult because we are always trying to work for everyone else everyday and think very little about the things that bring us the greatest happiness.
· Midcalf means a little goes along way. I can’t write 100,000 words in a day, but I can write 1,000. In 100 days I will have 100,000 words.
· Midcalf means joy. Finding joy at least once a day every day. No matter if it is your favorite song on the radio or flying away to Paris fashion week.
· Midcalf means you’re covered. Cherish your support systems, those people, places, and things in your life that you can always count on to help you brush yourself off when your stiletto is stuck in a crack.
· Midcalf means living. Living now, in the space you are in every day.
· Midcalf means dreaming. Even if you are living now, never stop dreaming about where you want your future living now to be.
· And MOST important Midcalf means loving everything even when you don’t. It is amazing the power of positive thinking to transform and change your life, your hopes, your dreams, and the world.
Some days I am swallowed up in that prairie skirt, floundering in what feels like yards of crinkled fabric made up of bills, work, dishes, sentences that lack structure, people that consume my mind and my time. Other days I have that pencil skirt strut juggling lunch with friends and commitments like a pro, giving everyone the best of me and still having time to watch Zoolander while enjoying a bottle of wine. No matter what kind of day it is I am always looking for those midcalf moments always looking for that perfect fall between prairie and pencil.
