Fish or cut bait

PHOTO: Just messing with ya. There's not two of me, the world couldn't handle it...

THE LULU CHRONICLES

As many of you know I’m a writer. With two published books under my belt, you’d think it would be easier to get the third one published, right? Not so much. Now, if I were a Grisham, a Lucado or Kingsbury publishers would be lining up for that next book. Alas, I’m not. I’m just me and the truth of the matter is that I haven’t written that ‘breakout’ book yet.

It’s tough being a ‘newbie’ at age 60, but that’s really what I am, at least in the world of publishing. But I heard something today from author Brennan Burchard that has struck a cord with me, and has put me on notice. He says that he’s never met a New York Times Best seller author who just dabbled in their writing; Who just wrote a couple of hours here, and an hour the next week and so on. Nope, the writers he knows, and he knows several NYT Best Seller authors and is one himself, make a commitment to their writing. They do this by “disappearing off the planet” for a while and immersing themselves in their work. They block off huge chunks of time to write to allow the creative flow to happen. Without a true, gritty commitment to what you want in the writing world, you won’t get it.

That’s probably true in any other world a well. If you want to be the best teacher you can be, you have to work at it. If you want to be the best mom, you have to commit to it. If you want to be an individual who when they leave this world want to be known as kind, compassionate and giving, you have to commit to living that kind of life. Just dabbling in what you want, will not make it so.

That goes for commitment to better health and riding a pink bike as well. I’ve got to decide if I’m satisfied to just continue to dabble in my writing, play around with my health, and just ride LuLu when the spirit moves me. All of the above would be okay, if that is what I truly want… to dabble… to play around… to get as much fun out of LuLu sitting in the garage as I do pedaling down the road on her. I’m 60-years-old. It’s time I make up my mind about these things and others.

How about you? Anything you need to fish or cut bait on? As my granny, Ginny Mae, used to say, Pee or get off the pot!

Have a thoughtful weekend, friends,

deb

MEET LULU

Meet LuLu. She’s my new bike. I got her for my 60^th birthday even though I’m not quite sixty yet. I will be April 18. I wanted to get a head start with my bike riding since here in Wisconsin if you don’t get outside right when the ground starts to thaw, you’ve missed spring. You may be asking yourself, “Why would a sixty-year- old want a bike anyway?” Good question. My answer: I think it will be a great way to try and get my aching, aging, overweight, almost, practically disabled body back in shape…she said foolishly. So here’s the deal: As of today, I’m starting The LuLu Chronicles. For some reason my new little Schwinn bike has the name “LuLu” painted on her. Go figure. But it fits, I think. I want to ‘record’ my progress or lack of and hopefully learn something along the way about myself, challenges, longsuffering and anything else my new friend, LuLu, thinks I need to know. I’m actually going to write this blog as if someone is reading it. Although I do think I have three faithful readers. Bless your hearts.

Actually, I’m on day two of bike riding after a week of trying to find the perfect bike seat. Three seats later, bingo! I think I’ve found the largest bike seat this side of the Mississippi. I still hang off of it a bit, if you know what I mean, but it will do nicely. Of course, just because my new seat is the size of Montana and Wyoming combined, doesn’t mean it’s comfortable or that I’ve been able to avoid the dreaded ‘bike butt’ phase of my new venture. For the record, from now on, I think I will refer to my butt and all those parts near by as ‘the cowgirl’ (you know, the bike seat being the ‘saddle’ and all). I’m doing this to avoid any shady characters that happen to Google looking for porn the trouble of finding their way to my sight. That just creeps me out. Plus, it sounds more lady-like, sort of. Anyways, the cowgirl has bike butt after two days of being in the saddle.

Here are my challenges:

I’m middle aged. (Yes, I plan on living to be 120)

I’m over weight.

I have an artificial knee that is a HUGE whiner.

And… I have a terrible track record of sustaining anything that’s good for me for longer than, let’s say, three and a half minutes.

So there you have it. Day Three of bike riding will start tomorrow. If you’d like, join me along the way. I’d like company. Let’s see what we can learn…

deb

PS. The dog in the picture with LuLu and me is Murphy. Little does he know that I've order a little 'doggie basket' for him that fits on my handle bars. Aren't we going to have fun (heh-heh).