Tell the Truth Tuesday

Here are some of my truths today:

1- I'm scared of the dark. I hate having to get up at night and do anything because I always think there's someone hiding in the shadows, waiting to get me.

2- Nightmares stink. Unless they spur an idea for a book. Unfortunately, the nightmare I had last night didn't spur an idea for a book, it was just plain awful. Basically there were two gigantic snakes, and one of them ended up attacking my mom and trying to kill her. Yeah, not a good idea for a book.

3- I totally failed at NaNo this year. I kind of knew I shouldn't sign up, because there was just too much going on to dedicate myself to it, but I did anyway. And now I'm a failure. Bummer.

3- On the bright side, I did manage to run my Thanksgiving Day Human Race and get my Thanksgiving dinner on the table last week (I hosted my whole family). My 6-yr-old ended up running it with us (and my husband had to push the other two kids in the stroller because our babysitter bugged out on us at the last minute). But he did great! He actually would have placed 11th in his age division if we'd had a bib for him. I was a proud Mama.

4- Baby weight stinks to get rid of, not to mention what it does to the skin on your belly. In a totally unrelated thought, does anyone else think that Mariah Carey had a tummy tuck? Because I saw the picture of her saying, "look at how skinny I am now after twins" or something like that on the cover of People, and her belly button didn't look too natural anymore. I'm just sayin'...

5- When SHH is out of town for work, I have a hard time wanting to make "real" meals for dinner. Or breakfast. Or any meal for that matter. It's just so much work when I only seem to have a 50/50 chance that my kids will actually eat more than 3 bites. (Their appetites come and go faster than a Black Friday deal at Wal Mart.) But I'm actually making a full on meal today--the best chicken pot pie recipe ever, jello salad, dessert, the whole works. My truth is that it's not really for my family, it's for a neighbor. I'm just doubling the recipe for our dinner, because it would be really lame to make it for someone else and not get to eat it myself.

What are your truths today? Lay 'em on me -- success, failure, whatever it may be.

Success

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." - Robert Collier

I hope everyone had a great week! We sure did. I missed staying in touch with all of my online friends and blogs, but it was also kind of nice to unplug for a while. I honestly didn't even think about checking my email for a couple of days. That was like some sort of miracle. Ha ha. Thanksgiving was fabulous, my family rocks, I have so much to be thankful for, and yep. It was a great week! How was yours? What did I miss out on?

So, on to the quote. Or, back to the quote, as the case may be. Success. It's what we all want, right? Our definitions of success are probably different--one person may think just getting a book on a shelf somewhere, ANYWHERE is success. Others may not feel "successful" until they are a bestseller. Those are just two examples, and obviously not all the success we want necessarily applies to getting published. There are many other successes I worry about and hope to achieve, the top of the list being my desire to successfully raise my children into honest, happy, independent (yet still family oriented), confident, loving, caring, wonderful people. Is that too much to ask? Yikes. I hope not.

When I start to feel overwhelmed in my efforts to be successful, this quote is very comforting. It's the little things, the small efforts, repeated day after day that will get me there. With my kids, with my life, with my writing, with anything I'm striving for. By writing every day, by revising, by reading, by learning and applying and moving forward. I. Will. Make. It. And so will you.

So what little things do you need to be doing each day?