Growing up my dad had two go-to pieces of advice that he used for just about any situation. ‘Shit or get off the pot’ – I think it’s perfectly clear where I got my poetic turn of phrase – and ‘Pick your battles, not everything is worth getting upset about.’ While I definitely think the former was his favorite, the latter always seemed to come up when I would do something that I assumed he would get upset about – mostly because my friend’s parents had – only to find out that he wasn’t upset at all. He would simply remind me that I was a good kid, straight-a student, etc., that kids made mistakes, and that he had better things to get upset about. Now mind you, I did see him get upset on occasion, but those occasions were few and far between. Over time, I realized that those ‘better things’ were only things that truly mattered. Things that would make a difference 5 or 10 years down the road. Something that would be forgotten in a week or two, would illicit a raised eyebrow at the most.

Sometimes I have to remind myself of that. I blog on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it is a goal of mine this year to keep to that schedule and not skip days like I did quite often last year. So this year I’ve been sticking to it, and I’ve been doing a good job of it too. Until yesterday. I didn’t get a blog written and that broke the longest streak I have ever had. This made me upset. Not crying, throw a temper tantrum upset, but enough that I was down on myself. I had broken my streak, and I didn’t like that. Then last night as I was cleaning out all of my kitchen cabinets with my roommate – long story – my dad’s words came back to me, ‘You’ve got better things to be upset about. Pick your battles.’

That’s when I realized that I had picked my battle yesterday, and I had picked it correctly. For some time now I have lost my confidence in my Heroines of History articles. I have no idea why, or what triggered this, but I find myself paralyzed when it comes down to writing them. I do the research, and I can talk about the woman all day, but for whatever reason, when it comes time to put words on the page I freeze up. I come up with something else that has to be done first, something that is more important. I push it aside and keep moving the task down my to-do list. Well yesterday, I guess I decided to follow my dad’s first piece of advice – shit or get off the pot. It was time to write that piece and get it checked off my to-do list. So I started, and I hated everything that came out. I think I rewrote the first paragraph seven times before it was even tolerable enough to move on. It was painful and laborious, but eventually I worked through the crap – fear, loathing, self-doubt – and by the time I was nearing the end of the article, I found, much to my amazement, that I was actually enjoying myself. Writing her story was making my blood flow with a purpose again.

I had chosen my battle for the day, and I had won. So what was the point of getting upset about missing a blog post? So this week I’ll blog on Tuesday and Friday. That’s perfectly acceptable. I have better things to get upset about.