One Foot In Front Of The Other

Photo by Tegan Mierle on Unsplash

When I think of a goal, I'm reminded of a song from a children's Christmas special. Usually children's songs and TV specials have positive messages wrapped in song, and "One Foot In Front Of The Other" from Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer is no exception.

Yeah, I'm sure on the surface, this sounds like a really cheesy post in the making. But, if you stick it out, you'll see where I'm going with this.

The pure and simple message of the song is so true. One step is just a step, but when you put one foot in front of the other, you're walking toward your goal.

When we learn to walk, it's first a step, then maybe another step, then usually an interruption of some kind in the form of a challenge to our progress. Either a falling down on your butt, or someone comeing over to grab your arms to help you take a series of steps. But any help you receive isn't walking. It's stepping. When you do it on your own, that series of steps you take on your own is walking.

Fast forward a year, ten years, thirty years, and you're walking without even thinking about it. You don't tell yourself to stand up, and you don't recite the instructions of one foot in front of the other in your head when you want to move forward anymore.

Walking is now as natural as breathing.

I'm so committed to writing now that some days I panic a little. I panic when something doesn't come to mind to write about right away. And I panic when I think I won't be able to publish on a given day because I'm just too busy to get to my computer to publish my post.

And so some days, I'll write more than one post. One day I remember writing three posts and two drafts.

Today, this is my second post of the day, even though I publish only once a day. So, just like walking, I just write when I want to get somewhere. I don't think about it as much, except when I think I won't be able to do it for some reason. And then it only makes me want to write more.

Now, I just write out my thoughts, and whenever I have a free moment, I've got a couple posts I can grab a photo for, upload it, link to it, and publish. Takes maybe 3 minutes. Sometimes longer if I can't find the perfect photo.

It's strange that now the hardest part of publishing a blog post isn't the activity of writing any more. The hardest part to publishing a post is finding the right picture, and not actually finding the right words. Hard to believe.

All I did was just put one word after the other, nowadays without really thinking about the mechanics of it, and that's how I move forward with my writing. How many other things can we accomplish if we take these simple instructions from a song in a children's show?