“E.L. Doctorow said once said that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

We meet moments in our lives, one to the next, that were unpredictable just before we arrived there. We’re all figuring things out as we move through our lives, one puzzle after another. We learn that we don’t have it all figured out, but that we can figure it out when we get there. Sure, save for retirement, and eat the right foods and exercise to build a foundation of health for tomorrow, but don’t face down imaginary monsters that may never rise to challenge us. Take each day as it comes.

Writing and publishing a blog every day, like writing a line per day in my journal, is a great way to assess whatever mile marker I’ve arrived at along the way. What keeps us present with the things that are right in front of us, and not worried or distracted by the clown show happening off to the side? Those clowns may impact our lives, but we have to remember that we’re driving our own life and focus accordingly.

To that end, keeping ourselves to task on the essential things we need to do in any given day is a great way to force ourselves to focus on what’s in front of us. I know I need to finish writing this blog, follow up with several people in my work, complete a project that I haven’t wanted to deal with, work out twice, read and hydrate properly. Everything else that fits in the vehicle as we’re moving down this road is a bonus, but completing each of those is the engine that keeps me moving forward.