Best Laid Plans!

You have heard it before, "The best laid plans of mice and men!" Well that was camp Nano for me last month. I wanted a reason to write every day, but I didn't take into account all the other things that I needed to do last month.  While I did get a good start on my Nano book I ran into problems along the way, and needless to say, I was not successful.

There have been times in my writing career that I have found myself unsuccessful and it had managed to get me down. There was a time when the reviews on one of my books made me want to give up all together. I didn't take into account that people have every right to express their opinion, and I just needed to take what they were saying and learn from it. Sometimes our success only come from our failures.

Last week I had the opportunity to spend the week up at Girls Camp. Monday through Friday I spent all my time with wonderful leaders and a huge group of amazing girls. We did crafts, talked, laughed, hiked and stayed up way to late. Wednesday when we went on our hike I found myself struggling to make it down the mountain. I had been up since 4:00 am and I was tired!  A sweet girl walked with me and kept me company, and we had a good conversation. I told her about the last time I hiked that particular hike, and I came across snail making its way down the path. I told her how I picked the snail up to look at it the put it back up on the mountains side so it wouldn't get stepped on. It didn't occur to me until later that I might have set the poor thing back several days worth of work. It reminded me an awful lot about how life can set us back when we already felt like we put in so much work. I couldn't help but point this out to my hike companion, and she managed to change my perspective on everything in a few short sentences.

She was quick to remind me that sometimes a set back is really just giving us a head start on something else. I may have felt like I was moving that snail away from his goal, but maybe I moved him closer to something that would be of more help to him at that time.  I don't know about the snail, but there are times when my setbacks really have been the beginning of something I never would have imagined.  I hope from now on I can learn and grow from the frustrations I face in my life and use them to boost me in a better direction.  I hope that for all of you too.  Happy reading, and or writing and know you can do great things!