Just One More Day<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special.<\/em><\/p>\n It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – John Irving<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Back in the aughts, when I was writing my first book, \u201cAwakening the Healer Within,\u201d I faced some problematic issues like continuity, story arcs and creating an ebb and flow of tension. These things hadn\u2019t come into play when I was writing a story or an article. That\u2019s all I had done up to that time and they were like doing a sprint. Penning an entire book, however, with a theme, characters, and plot lines, one chapter flowing into the next and finally ending up somewhere, was like running a marathon. I had no idea how to organize such a huge undertaking. Did I have the stamina to get through with it?<\/p>\n If anyone did, I thought it should be me. I had a lot of practice. When I was a teenager, touring across the United States with my ballet company, my first tour was ten weeks of one night stand performances. We all piled into a bus every morning. When we reached our destination \u2013 Chicago, About three weeks in, I remember thinking, I can’t do this for one more day. I actually considered leaving and catching a flight home but I finished the ten-week tour. I was sleep deprived and injured, but I didn\u2019t give up. Not physically or mentally. As a result, that kind of stamina has followed me throughout the rest of my life.<\/p>\n It takes courage to try something new that is hard. It takes stamina to keep on going. You do it gradually. Day by day. Just do a little bit more than you think you can. Meditate a little bit longer. Do two extra reps when you\u2019re doing crunches. Write for fifteen minutes longer than you did yesterday and have patience with yourself. You can\u2019t speak a foreign language when you first enroll in a class. You practice, word by word, phrase by phrase, until you get the hang of it. You have to acknowledge the resistance and move through it. You have to encourage yourself when nobody else will and take it slow and steady. Above all, you have to keep on going. Who knows what you\u2019ll find on the other side?<\/p>\n There many successful authors who endured multiple rejections before they sold their books. J. K. Rowling submitted her first Harry Potter manuscript to twelve publishers who rejected it. She ended up going with a small publishing house, Bloomsbury Press, and her books became fabulously successful. Kathryn Stockett who wrote \u201cThe Help\u201d was rejected sixty times. I didn\u2019t know there were that many publishers in the world, but she knew. It was a good thing the above mentioned women believed in themselves enough to keep going despite monumental odds.<\/p>\n Win or lose, there is great comfort in knowing you did whatever you could and you didn\u2019t stop and abandon yourself. Then there are no regrets. When I started to write consistently, there were times I dragged myself to the computer, feeling like a victim, resenting my lot in life, forcing myself to do Stamina is like a muscle, something you have to keep flexing to make it strong and dependable or it will atrophy. A few mornings ago, I spent hours trying to figure out why Zoom was acting up. Something had changed in their setup and there was no customer service available. I need it for my writing class later that day and I panicked. I tried a load of different ways to get what I needed and I became more and more frustrated. But I kept on trying and after a few hours, I figured it out. \u00a0<\/p>\n After so many years of writing daily, I see writing as my holy calling, a tile in the mosaic of my spiritual path, a practice that gets stronger the more I do it. It doesn\u2019t take stamina any more. It\u2019s simply what I do.<\/p>\n Pema Chodron, my go-to spiritual teacher has written several dozen books, but when she started, she says it was difficult for her \u201cto scare up enough stamina to write a book.\u201d Or to be human. She writes, \u201cThe goal is to develop spiritual stamina so when a problem occurs, I don’t react out of emotion but out of wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2015 Emory Austin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just One More Day \u00a0 I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – John Irving \u00a0 Back in the aughts, when I was writing my first book, \u201cAwakening the Healer Within,\u201d I faced some problematic issues like continuity, story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2913,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions\/2913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Los Angeles, Honolulu, or remote places like Hayes, Kansas, and Muskogee,
Oklahoma \u2013 we checked into a crummy hotel and showed up at the designated performance venue. We warmed up for an hour and we rehearsed that night\u2019s program for musical tempos and stage placement. Then we found a nearby greasy spoon restaurant and it was back to the theater for hair and makeup. After the performance, we had a bite to eat and we conked out hard. When the alarm went off in the morning, we hauled our suitcases to the elevator, got back on the bus, and did it all over again.<\/p>\n
something I didn\u2019t want to do. But I did it. Sometimes I wrote and rewrote one paragraph for hours, determined to keep doing it until I was satisfied.<\/p>\n