Small Good Things Are Better

When I'm trying to do something big... say... write a novel, it can be too big and I just don't do it. This is the case with an epic trilogy that I have been poking at for seven years. I've completed many other small projects since the seed of that epic space trilogy came to me, and if I tally up the word counts for all those other projects, it's very clear that I could have written that space trilogy.

But... in the past I have tried to take it all on at once, at least mentally, as a trilogy. Which, to say kindly and in an effort not to shame my past self, was a mild sort of insanity. :) You may have been in that kind of mild insanity too. If you did, I believe you had valid reasons for it, as I did. 

But... valid reasons or not, it didn't get us the results we wanted. At least, it didn't work for me.

To date my space trilogy is still not finished.

I forget that it's okay to do small things. In fact, I think the only things I really can do are small things.

Books, for example. When I consider it, it's done one letter at a time. Not even one word at a time, one letter at a time. If I try to do more than one letter at a time, itl so k c liek the sle. 

That was me trying to type, 'it looks like this' multiple letters at once. I didn't even hit the right ones. :)

A novel is just too big. A chapter, even. But I can write one letter. And then I can write a second, and a third. That's how I did every book beforehand. Literally, one letter at a time.

The other life stuff, other big stuff? It's not helpful for me, personally, to try to do it big. Every once in a while I forget and try to make a huge life change in an instant, or shave off some personal character defect immediately, or make a grandiose promise to myself that I shall ALWAYS and FOREVER remember to do a particular chore, or try to accurately predict my own future five years out. 

Such efforts typically lack power other than the immediate beginning burst, and they don't even crash and burn, they hardly get off the ground to begin with.

But what does work for me is this: Systems. 

Systems where I do things one letter at a time. Systems where I just show up, even if I don't feel like it, and do something small, and then do something small, and then do something small. Systems where I don't have to do the big thing. Systems where the big thing is not the big focus, where the big thing is a quiet factor off in the background, like a distant friendly mountain. Systems where it's acceptable to just take a single step. 

That works for me. 

These systems work even better when there are other people in my life who are also using systems, or who I can share my progress with. And I've been blessed by adopting systems that other people designed. It's given me the foundation I needed to be able to begin to build my own personal systems. I'm currently building and refining a new system to help me walk the one-letter-at-a-time journey to the completion of my space trilogy. It's promising, and someday I may post about that.

But, not today. That's a later thing. 

Today? I'm just glad about today's small good things.