Persist

Anyone who knows me knows that I wear several bracelets. It’s something I started doing a few years ago, mainly because I wanted to express myself, but also because some have words I wanted to focus on. I’ve mentioned them in a few blogs posts here as well.

One of the words I have on a bracelet is the word persist.

It’s a simple word really. It means to continue, to stay the course, to persevere despite anything and everything. And sometimes, I need to be reminded that despite all that may want to push me down or push me away, I can and have persisted.

I was told I would never amount to much as a writer. I was told that all of this scribbling and daydreaming was just a big waste of time. And yet, I persisted. I continued to write, despite the naysayers who sometimes still say I am not a writer. I’ve written sixteen books in a series, with a seventeenth coming in the next few months. I’ve written a serial novel that has its own following. I write this blog, which has been read by over four thousand people in 2023 already. While in the grand scheme of things, I am not a famous writer, I am a writer and I will continue to claim I am despite the fact that there are some who still look down their noses at me because I am not a traditionally published writer nor am I making more than a few dollars from this writing.

But I spend a part of almost every day writing in some capacity nevertheless.

I persist in more ways than just writing, though. I persist each and every day when I choose to get out of bed and get on with my day. I persist in making sure I continue to walk. As I wrote in my blog post Miles and Miles, I have walked at least a mile each and every day the month of September, also getting at least 12000 steps each day I didn’t work and upwards of 25000 on the days I did work. And while there were some days where I wanted to give up, I persisted in completing the goal.

But I didn’t get to the point where I walk almost twenty thousand steps in a day overnight. It took me years to get to the point where I could do it almost consistently. Having an active job does help in this daily average, but being persistent is also key. It meant making a conscious effort each and every day to just get up and move. It meant sometimes asking my smart speaker to stream an upbeat song and dancing like a maniac.

I also managed to complete another goal this past month, one that took five full months of work. The Warren County Conservation Board oversees the natural resource management and outdoor recreation areas in this swath of the Midwest in which I live. Every 1 April, they release 25 geocaches in a geocaching adventure in their managed areas, all trackable by GPS coordinates and all containing a small trading card which one needs to collect when one finds the cache. The catch is they are only available until the end of October.

I have attempted this adventure the past three years and while I managed to find some, I had failed in getting all twenty five of them. This year however, in fact this past week, I managed to get the twenty-fifth card, which then allowed me to find the final secret cache and the finisher coin. The entire collection is pictured below:

As a result of that adventure, I logged many miles of hiking and saw some awesome trails. I went through an entire can of bug spray and most of a bottle of sunscreen. I watched hawks, songbirds and buzzards fly overhead and counted numerous butterflies, crickets, beetles, bees, wasps and other insects. I climbed towers and hills and was inspired by my many adventures to write more stories and add to ones already written. I waded through waist high prairie grasses, valleys of thorns (if you read Portal Seeker, you’d know!), Virginia Creeper and other forest floor plants and discovered that I am not allergic to poison ivy though I still try to avoid it.

I persisted. And it felt awesome.

It takes baby steps and persistence to get anywhere in life. It takes making a decision and then sticking with it, even when something else feels easier. It takes pushing through the mental and physical roadblocks you’ve set for yourself in order to get what you set out to do done. And maybe the effort wasn’t worth it, but perhaps…. just perhaps you find the rewards far exceed any expectations you may have had. But in order to get it done, you must persist. Whether it’s training for a triathlon, losing that last five pounds, completing a month of 12000 plus daily steps, recovering from a catastrophic medical event, overcoming a struggle, or writing a story. Persist.

After all, it’s as much a part of that story of life you are writing as anything else. It’s part of the magic you make each and every day.

So put that first little baby step forward, dig deep into your resolve and continue onward in something.

Persist.

Stay magical.

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