More Carrot, Less Stick - Word of the Week

(Achievement n: Something accomplished successfully, especially by means of exertion, skill, practice, or perseverance. Ety: noun of action from O.Fr. achever early 14c.,  "to finish, accomplish, complete," from phrase à chef (venir) "at an end, finished")


You know what? I think that we, as writers, bloggers or generally as PEOPLE, do not blow our own trumpets enough and share our achievements with others. Over all the previous Word-of-The-Weeks (WoTWs) I've talked a lot about learning and growing and developing, not just as a writer (well, my journey as, er, a writer/blogette type person) but I don't think I've really posted enough about just `owning` what you do. And no matter how big or how small, if it's an achievement to you then it should be celebrated - and that's what this week's WoTW is all about.


First of all, I want all of you, every single person reading this blog to give themselves a pat on the back (or if that's too hard, have a bit of chocklit, that's good too). I want to you to do that to say thank you because the first thing we are celebrating, in the name of achievement is that this week, we passed 10k views of this blog since January. Yes, wow, yikes etc - more than 10 thousand individual views of this blog (and not all of them were me or my mum). So big THANKS  to all of you who read this blog, who comment, who say lovely things to me on Facebook/Twitter etc etc, it is so very appreciated and I could not have done it without you. I'm not sure where this blog is headed or what the end purpose is yet, but I think that 10k views in 3.5 months is not to be sneezed at and I have so loved blogging - so all you guys are kind of, holding my hand, encouraging me to continue. That to believe that just maybe, I can write for some kind of audience. So keep on with that pat on the back/chocklit eating - pretend it's from ME!


Secondly, achievement - as I said, nothing is too big or too small. I think we spend far too much time beating ourselves up and stressing about things, and forget that sometimes, on bad days, even getting out of bed is an achievement. In fact, depending on my mood, all of the following can be achievements for me:

• Getting out of bed
• Looking at people when I'm wearing my glasses (can't bear to do this because I think I'm so ugly I don't want them to see)
• Making it to the top of the climbing wall
• Blogging
• Pitching to clients
• Running for ONE MORE FUCKING MINUTE (past 5 minutes...!)
• Not having Maccie D's for lunch
• Scrambling down to the crag when climbing (this can be scarier than climbing)
• Killing spiders
• Sleeping when I'm home alone

So if you've done anything today that involved confronting a fear, doing something you didn't want to do, doing something nice, writing, blogging, creating and just generally being you and being fab, I want you to take the next 5 minutes and just celebrate that. Be happy, you rock. 

Finally, please make sure that every day, you just take time to think okay, you know what, I'm not so bad, in fact, I'm doing pretty well at this - whatever it is that `this` for you is - being it writing, climbing, creating - even just living. I definitely don't do this enough - and I'm not saying we should all be big headed - but sometimes you can beat yourself up when instead you need to be your inner cheerleader (especially if she looks like Santana or Brittany from Glee).

And that's all for this week's WoTW - just a short one as I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo tired after doing lots of climbing on real rock including an 18 metre sea cliff climb (check this out for a pic - tho it's not me in the pic). Hope it was okay - let me know your thoughts below, as ever :)

Thank you and goodnight

Stupidgirl has left the building