Monday, February 1, 2010

Defining Success

If you need a little boost to your Monday morning, go take a peek at Robin Bielman’s latest blog post, "Are you successful?"

All too often I find myself in the trap of comparing myself against everyone else, and coming up short. When I hear the words “Are you successful?”, my first thought is "At what?" I look at my day job, and compare myself to coworkers who routinely work twice the hours I do before going home and reading software manuals, and think, "No way am I success at software engineering." I join writing pals for my weekly crit group and see two contracted authors and one agented one, while I have an inbox full of rejections and not-quite-finaling contest entries and think "No way am I a success at writing." And then I go home to piles of laundry, terrible-twos-tantrums, and too many dinners of hotdogs or frozen chicken nuggets and think "No way am I success at motherhood."

Its way, way too easy to fall into that trap of seeing everything that’s wrong instead of what’s right. And today, what’s right is this: I have a wonderful husband of eight-and-a-half years (almost fifteen years together as a couple!), two beautiful and smart children, a good job that is flexible enough for me to be home with my kids when I need to be, and a writing hobby that’s a heck of a lot of fun, even if I never make a dime at it.

Thanks, Robin, for reminding me this morning about what success really is.

2 comments:

Robin Bielman said...

Hi, Kristi! You're welcome! And thanks for the nice shoutout. I can so identify with everything you said too. (Queen of mac and cheese for dinner here.) We really do get caught up in what everyone else is doing/accomplishing, don't we? But that doesn't and shouldn't weigh on our own success. We're all trying to do the best we can do, and I think you're a lot like me and when at the end of the day we put our kids to bed and then go back to look at them sleeping, and kiss our hubby's goodnight, then that's the true measure of a successful life.

Amanda said...

Sometimes it's nice to figure out what's good in our lives and stop worrying about what is going crazy with our lives. :) A supportive husband, loving children, a warm house and plentiful food. If we achieved all our dreams right away, what fun would life be? :)