I’m a writer. That’s no surprise. It’s why I’ve committed to posting to this blog every day, helped of course by the word prompt of the day.

What is astonishing to me is how committed I am to this suddenly. I’ve honestly tried this several times in the past and have always given up after a few weeks. I have a lot of conflicting priorities and goals; my life is full of family, friends, children and fun; there is so much I want to do and achieve that I move from one to the next too quickly to commit to any one thing for long.

I struggle with my weight so I try to make eating healthy and exercising a priority. This takes a lot of time and effort. I have been eating gluten free (for the most part) since January and have lost almost 30 pounds. But this requires me to do a lot more cooking from scratch than I might normally do. There’s a lot of prep work involved in cooking this way. It takes time to come up with new recipes to keep eating healthy foods from becoming too boring to take. I’ve been going to the gym and bike riding as often as I can and look forward to kayaking now that the water is warming up.

I am very involved with my kids and have them almost every weekend. We frequently have their friends over; I take them all over to take advantage of everything around us; we work on a variety of projects at home as well. We are now working on a vision board. The girls have been asking to start traveling to different locations recently; we typically travel just to NH but they want to see new places now. So we are going to create a vision board of the places we want to go; we will do some research on what it will cost to go to each one and work on a plan to start seeing some of the places they want to go.

I have two houses to maintain, the one we live in and a rental home. Both houses take a significant amount of time and money. The girls love to watch things grow and we have created a lot of planting beds in our yard recently. Because Florida is a tropical location, keeping weeds out of the beds is becoming a full time job, but as the plants grow the yard is looking nice. Next they want to plant a vegetable garden, which we used to have in NH. The growing season is different here though so this project will require some research.

I have many close friends here and do my best to make them a priority. If I don’t it’s easy for months to slip by without seeing some of them. I value their friendship and they truly enhance my life so I try not to let that happen; but they’re busy too so sometimes it’s difficult to coordinate our schedules. Some day I’d love to add a different type of relationship to this mix, but it has proven difficult to find the kind of person who understands and supports all of my priorities so that may wait a bit.

My family is very important to me and my niece has spent the past couple of summers with us. We travel up to NH at least once a year to see our friends and family, often spending at least 10 days at a time there. It has been very special having my niece here every summer, but that means summers are full of activities and time spent with her. This coming summer will be her last with us, the summer before her senior year in high school. I can’t believe she’s growing up so fast and I will be sure to mark this summer somehow.

Giving back to the community is important to me. When the girls were in elementary school I would volunteer in their classrooms every week. Now that they’re older I’m getting them involved as well. They both love animals so we’ve begun fostering for the county animal shelter. We’ve mostly fostered kittens but also once fostered a couple of puppies for 3 weeks. We also set money aside every week to buy gifts for other children at Christmas, ones who might otherwise have nothing under their tree. Saving for it weekly ensures this stays in the forefront of the girls’ minds. I want them to be reminded of how fortunate they are.

Work projects can be demanding. I recently completed a project that was supposed to last 8 months, yet took over 3 years. I’m now working on a major system upgrade that could be disastrous if I don’t do all that needs to be done prior to the upgrade; however all the daily issues that come up are still there, waiting for me to solve. This is all on top of still supporting the 3 year project that really may never end and working on transitioning some transactions to a different bank, plus whatever else seems to be important today.

The list could go on, but I think you get the idea. There’s a lot in my life in addition to writing. How is it that I’ve been able to stick with it this time when I haven’t in the past?

Honestly, it’s because I’ve made a decision. I need something positive in my life. I need to feel like I’m adding value to the world. I need to create something that is uniquely mine. And I’ve decided I will do that through writing, whether it be this blog, other blogs, the book I just published or future books waiting to be written.

I examined what was missing from my life and have determined that the holes are best filled by writing,and so I write. I have mentally linked what I want in life to my writing, and so I write. I searched for my meaning and found it in writing, and so I write.

I hope that my writing touches others, that it helps me connect and possibly form a community of like-minded people. And I’ve seen that start to happen. The success I’ve had so far does help keep me motivated, it fuels my commitment, and for that I thank you.

I thank you for reading my posts, for sharing in the excitement over my accomplishments. And I hope to astonish you all with what will come in the future. I hope to celebrate your achievements and I look forward to lifting each other up, for we really are stronger together. My success will help you succeed, and your success will do the same for me.

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This post is in response to the daily writing prompt Astonish