I am going to try and write every day for the month of February. Twenty-eight days.
Hold up a minute, you may be saying.
This year, February has 29 days.
Ah, and so you would be right.
As I read Present over Perfect on the flight home from Washington, D.C., where I worked this week, I made some decisions about areas I wanted to be more intentional in my life. My marriage was one of them. Writing, another.
So I determined I would write every day this month. Yikes. A tall order. But, I thought to myself, it’s only 28 days. Like somehow, 28 days is worlds easier than 30 or 31.
Then, last night, after my mom’s birthday dinner at home (at home because little bit got sick, thank you Door Dash), I erased our January family calendar in the kitchen and wrote out our February calendar.
We have this erasable wall calendar next to our kitchen table on which I write our commitments at the beginning of each month so we can see what’s ahead. I took out my Outlook calendar, it’s my master, and wrote everything I knew of thus far on the family kitchen calendar.
That’s when I saw it.
This year.
What are the odds?
This is the every four year hit where February has 29 days.
Ugh. Sigh.
Somehow, that one measly extra day nearly made me throw in the towel on this whole project. Maybe because January was unbearably long, an extra day in February just seemed like too much to ask.
Have you ever felt like that? Like one otherwise small thing feels really big?
This week, while working in D.C., I got a request from an internal client to help them draft something. In any other circumstances, I would have knocked it out happily without a second thought.
But because I was working a 14 hour day and was away from home, this one tiny project was the straw that threatened to break the camel’s back.
A colleague of mine had already offered to help deal with some of my overflow given my particularly intense work season. I’d said thanks, I’d keep that in mind, all the while thinking I can just handle all this myself.
But Monday night, nope. I couldn’t. I realized it. So I sent a short note, Hey, sorry to need to bring you in on this pretty insignificant matter, but I need some help. Could you work this out with Mr. X?
First thing in the morning, he was already on it. With a happy to help!
Ha!
Such relief!
This little assignment would have taken less than two hours to accomplish but it was two hours I didn’t have. The tiny thing that could have completely broken this camel’s back didn’t because I had help. Because I took someone up on their offer to help. I had a support system.
I’m going to try this writing every day thing. (Maybe I’ll even write that extra day.) I’ll post some on social media and some I won’t. You can follow along by subscribing or, if you already subscribe and are thinking I really don’t need to hear from you every day thank you very much, this is your fair warning to just delete every other email! Ha!
I’m grateful for a support system. I’m grateful for a gorgeous weekend and friends coming over later. And, I’m grateful for all of you who pop in here for the ride. Happy February friends.
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