Celebrating 2,000 Days of Blogging Today

"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." ~ Aristotle

I love to celebrate significant milestones in my life.  My writing journey began by penning love letters to my wife.  Every morning we picked a topic and wrote about our feelings.  Those spiral notebooks filled with over 5,000 pages of love letters are one of our most cherished possessions.  We wrote daily for nearly seven years.  I entered phase two when I set up this blog.  Today is day 2,000.  Although it took almost five and half years to reach mile marker 2,000, I feel like I'm just now finding my running legs.  This is the challenging part of the trail.  I'm on the final stages of my first novel, scheduled for release next month on St. Patrick's Day, March 17th.  There will be no rest.  I'm pushing through to publish a book about my struggles to break free from the debt monster who has been shadowing me every mile of my writing journey.  He will be vanquished from the race course forever when I make my very last credit card payment three days before "Break the Chains of Debt Bondage" is released on the 4th of July, 2015.

I have a confession to make.  It's a tale from the dark side.  There was a time in my life when I shunned writing.  I couldn't understand why my dad spent so much time writing stories about fictional people who only existed in his mind or why he was willing to withdraw money from his 401k to self-publish.  I did everything in my power to be different from him.  Life was about making money not about writing fairy tales.  I convinced my dad to sell real estate because I felt he needed a real job.  The sad thing is I never experienced his passion for writing until he was gone.  The void in my life made me feel empty.  I needed to fix something but I didn't know how to do it.  The answer came at a marriage encounter three-day weekend.  Surprise!  They told my wife and me we would be writing love letters to each other during our three days together.  The experience made me sick to my stomach.  Literally.  I didn't think I could finish the course.  I was in my room puking while my wife was attending one of the sessions.  The other couples prayed for me to get better.  I stayed.  And when I walked out I was forever changed.  I discovered how blessed I am to have a wife who loves me unconditionally.  I discovered my passion for writing.  I know what it feels like to write fairy tales.  More importantly, I know how it feels to live one.  It's as if I found who I am when I discovered my connection to the Creator.  I can best be summarized by this verse, from Isaiah 40:28-31...

²⁸ Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.
²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
³¹ but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.