Perspective

Sometimes I Find Perspective Hard to Hang Onto…

Sometimes so much good stuff comes in at the same time, that even a little bad stuff tends to really mess up the perspective.

For example, today was my last PT session after eight full months. Docs released me to the wild. Yay…

We are about 90% caught up on the disaster that was this spring and early summer. At least with all the major projects. Still a lot of stuff hanging out that will come around in time, but we are all having fun now and going forward.

The “issues” caused by the air conditioner water leak are resolved for the most part. At some point a little more will need to be done, but for now, all set.

And there are more small stuff that went well this week and Kris and I are planning for the future solidly with more writing.

The perspective comes in when there are a few minor things that happen that are annoying, but yet in perspective don’t come close to all the good stuff. In fact the two minor things that happened this week are so small, they are not worth mentioning. We dealt with both and just moved on.

And that’s where the perspective comes in.  Or as they used to call it “Asimov’s Rule.” Nine good things are said about your writing and one bad thing and all you will focus on is the bad thing. Every time.

So perspective in publishing and writing comes in many forms. Say you checked your sales at the six month point in the year and they are up slightly from last year, that’s a good thing. Yet if the sales were not as much as you hoped, it snaps into a bad thing.

Say you wanted to do a challenge, like two years ago I wanted to write a new short story every day for the entire year. Ended up doing over 140 new stories. So if my perspective is that I failed, it would be all doom and gloom, but my perspective is that I did in one year more stories than most writers can do in a lifetime. My perspective is that the challenge was a success and I won and am happy.

As I said, this kind of perspective is hard to hold at times, even when we are overwhelmed by great stuff happening. Like a perfect afternoon with a picnic, great food, great company, perfect temperature, and one pesky fly keeps buzzing around.

The fly is minor if you hold your perspective.