Choices

  Here's one of my biggest pet peeves. A fork in the trail. But which way to turn? Yes, it's been blazed. I put in a yellow arrow because it's hard to spot the blaze in the picture at this size. It's there. But... it's in the middle of the fork. So what the heck does that mean? Go right? Go left? One will get me where I want to go and one won't. The only solution is to try one way and see if other blazes appear. If not, you turn around and go back.

I end up feeling like this until I find another blaze.

I have to make a choice for the next year of my life. In truth, it's already been made, but I'm spending a lot of time hoping it's the right choice. I don't feel any strong heavenly guidance on this one.

I like to think that I've had a pretty good track record at making moral choices over the course of my life.

However, when it comes to making choices between seemingly equally good options... not so much. I just want to do everything. And in a lot of cases, I've tried to do just that. I've usually continued to bumble along doing a little bit of anything that interests me and completing very few things.

Now, I have two very clear choices for the next year. HIKE or Be AN AUTHOR. I can't do both. I can't turn around and go back. Well, I suppose I could quit the hike once I've started, but aside from injury or some other serious reason, I probably won't. I think the "worst case" is that I might have to go slower.

Someone asked me yesterday if I was getting excited about the North Country Trail hike, which is to begin in 62 days. I casually answered, "Oh, yes." But the truth is that I was excited when I started planning this. Now, I just have my head down and am trying to pile drive my way through the list of things that have to happen before I can leave for a year.

Hike?

Be an author? (Which is so much more than just writing words.)

If I don't do this hike this year, I think it might be too late to do it later. I'm pretty tough, but this trail is long, long, long. I need to do it now.

If I don't continue to work at this author thing, I'm going to lose a lot of the momentum I think I've built up with selling books.

But, I have chosen. I am wrapping up the author part of my life for a temporary hiatus. My goal is to get minor edits done to all the Anastasia Raven books, and the new cover designs uploaded for printing. And I'll be doing one more vendor event on November 6, at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Ludington for their Christmas Expo. Other than that... it's hike prep all the way, baby!

In other news: Today I wrote a news column, did laundry, worked on those book edits and uploads. Cathy took me to the store with her vehicle to get what I hope is the last load of 4x8 foot sheets of things from the lumber company. Still 60 items on my Big List. I have crossed off 14. TO DO- 46 things, 62 days. (But there are a couple more things I need to add to the list)

See It Doesn't Have to Be Epic