During the month of March, I successfully completed the Slice of Life Story Challenge. At the end of the month my writing life was feeling energized, and I committed myself to the Poem a Day challenge where as the title indicates, I would write a poem each day for the month of April. I made it eight days!

In the interest of my love of poetry writing, I had to stop. To me, poetry is like a fine meal; it takes time to prepare and time to enjoy. My poems were becoming more like fast food than fine dining. If this were an episode of Chopped, I would be the first chef going home.

Sometimes goals have to be re-evaluated, and plans need to be changed. That’s OK. I had to repeating this to myself, because I felt like I was letting someone down by not continuing to write a poem every day. Who was I letting down? My millions of followers? Myself? I write almost every day even when I do not publish a blog post. I don’t know why that isn’t enough. Why am I feeling like I failed?

Over the weekend I spoke with my daughter and was telling her my tale of woe. She suggested that I might be putting to much on my “to do” list and that my expectations were too ambitious. She really got me thinking.

Goals should be realistic and attainable or else you are setting yourself up for failure. While wanting to write a poem a day and admiring my circle of writing friends who do, is a nice thought, I know that realistically I can’t do it for a couple of reasons. First, this school year is just so demanding, and some days I don’t get to write until way past the time of coherent thinking. Secondly, poems don’t come quiet as freely to me as prose. I need to spend more time on a poem before I feel ready to share.

So I decided that I am going to feel satisfied that I wrote a poem for the first eight days of April and let it go at that. Hopefully I will write a post a few more before the end of the month, but if not; that’s ok too.

How about you? Are you being kind, patient, generous, and accepting of yourself? Are you cutting yourself a break? If not, you should. It is refreshing!