Being a doer is something that has been on my mind for a while. Thinking is easy. Action is hard. I told you that I’m writing a book, and I started with passion and fire, and it slowed to a crawl, then stopped. I made excuses for why that was okay.

“I tried getting up before the sun and writing at the beginning of the day, but I write so much better at night.”

“It’s been a long day and I’m tired, I don’t have the energy to write tonight.”

“I just need some time to get my daily life in order. If I can get more of a rhythm in my home, then I’ll be able to work in a regular writing time.”

“I can’t write my book right now because I feel like I’m in a spiritual desert. How can I write about being a faithful disciple when I’m not one?”

My excuses compounded to the point that I immobilized myself. They fed into my fears and I believed my own bad press. What it boiled down to is that it’s too hard, and I’m not capable.

My goal had been to write for at least an hour every day. An hour really isn’t a long time, but for something that I need quiet and solitude to accomplish, an hour became a mountain I could not scale. Rather than give in to defeat, I’m changing the rules. 15 minutes a day. That’s all I need to get done.

I’m following along with Jon Acuff’s DO Summer challenge to choose one skill and work on it for 15 minutes every day for 3 months. By September 8 I will have spent 1500 minutes developing my skill as a writer. My daily writing will sometimes be found here, and other times it will be spent on my book. I hope this will be a push in the direction of making writing a habit.

Because what’s worse than working hard to do what you know you should do is making excuses and living in fear of it. I’m tired of fearing my failure, I’m tired of excusing my inaction. It’s time to do something again.

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