Being Thankful For What Counts

I don’t normally wear two fitness trackers but I was conducting an experiment.

See, my older fitness tracker had a broken strap and a syncing snafu, so I decided to buy a new one. And the new one was practically perfect in every way; the strap was fine and it synced beautifully. But had I somehow turned into a slug? Because with my older tracker, I was hitting my step count by early evening but suddenly, early evening would ease into late evening and I wouldn’t be even halfway to my goal. And after a couple of days of wearing the two trackers, it became obvious that my older tracker counted every single step—and then some—whereas the new tracker required consecutive steps at a certain level of exercise-worthiness to start counting.

So why am I talking about fitness trackers? Because I wanted, on this eve of the eve of Thanksgiving, to make a point about comparison. To wit: I was perfectly happy with my new tracker until my experiment. Once I compared the two trackers, I was disappointed and downright annoyed, and yet, the new tracker did what it was supposed to do—and more importantly, what I needed it to do.

I looked at that new tracker and shook my head, thinking of my favorite quote, the one by Theodore Roosevelt: Comparison is the thief of joy.

And I wonder, here at the end of November, how many of us are comparing ourselves to all those writers participating in NaNoWriMo and feeling disappointed and downright annoyed with ourselves because we haven’t reached that 50,000 word goal? When maybe, just looking at our own personal goals for this writing challenge, we’ve achieved exactly what we wanted, or more importantly, what we needed to get done.

Or maybe we’re looking at our writing career as the year winds down and comparing ourselves to writer friends (or members of our critique group or basically every other writer we sort of know) who’ve achieved what we consider far greater success in 2019. When, if we just objectively look at what we personally wanted to achieve for 2019, we can feel pretty impressed with what we’ve accomplished in a year.

The thing is, success is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing, especially in the world of creatives. So join me this Thanksgiving and let’s be thankful for who we are. Resist the temptation to make comparisons, and focus instead on what’s been achieved, on the accomplishments made. I know I feel better and I guarantee you’ll find more joy in your writing life, and for that matter, life in general.

(And P.S. I’m just wearing one fitness tracker these days, the newer one. It’s fine the way it is, and that’s what really counts, right?)

~Cathy C. Hall wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving!