30 Days of Wishful Doing

It’s that time again.

Time to unplug from distraction and take a leap of faith in “doing new things”.

I wrote this blog last year, hoping to spark some courage in whoever might click on this page.

Spark a sense of hope that we are capable when we engage.

We are capable of much more than we think, if only we commit ourselves to just trying,

even if we only try it once. 

This year, might look a bit different.

Ill be reading more

cooking more

learning more

engaging more

Meeting people who are “doing more”

and risking a little bit more of my pride to try my hand at the things that interest me…. even if I’m no good at it all.

My pride will only lessen, which I’d say is probably best.

So here is the blog I wrote last year, full of the reason why I started all of this in the first place… I hope you’ll join us this year.

Enjoy!

A few months ago, my husband and I were in North Alabama at my grandmother’s old farmhouse, sitting around the kitchen table listening to old stories that my dad and his brother were sharing about their childhood.

“your great-grandmother, Laura, who you were named after, was always making something. She was always sewing, fixing, painting, gardening… you name it she was working on it until she went to bed”, Dad said to me.

My dad got up from the table and disappeared into the other room, returning with a folded table cloth.

“You see this? This is a table cloth made out of flour sacks. She used to sit at the table every night and stitch these together.  She never let anything be put to waste.”

Pretty cool, huh?

At least I thought so

I thought about my nightly routine of brushing my teeth, washing my face, and crawling into bed to watch an episode of The Office before I fall asleep.

And of course, setting the tv on “sleep timer” to make sure it turns off after I fall asleep.

#21stcenturyperks.

Recently I have found that my husband and I are consistently having conversations about things that we want to do.

I want to play the banjo.

I want to be better at sewing.

I want to write more.

I want to read more.

I want to garden.

You name it, we have *wished* it.

We spend so much time saying we want to better ourselves at things like that, but never actually put forth the effort.

We spend our spare hours watching episodes of shows that we have already seen.

My mama puts it perfectly, “Netflix is brain candy. You don’t have to think, you just enjoy it.”She’s so right.

We don’t have to think about the stresses of our lives.

We don’t have to put effort towards anything else in the day.

We just simply turn on a show, and tune out life’s worries.

So our ideas and aspirations, our dreams and hopes are merely wishful thinking.

But what if our wishes weren’t our weakness, but instead our strengths?

Things that we want to do are done and done well.

While away on a trip to the mountains, Cody and I discovered how much we wish and never do.

We started calculating how many hours are in a season of The Office.

We found that we spent three days worth of hours watching that show.

Three. Days. Of. Hours. Y’all.

After discovering this crazy reality, I looked at Cody and said “What will I have left for my children to remember me by? My knowledge of Michael Scott’s weirdness and Pam & Jim’s perfect love story?”

Something has got to be different.

So we started thinking.

What if we unplugged our TV and replaced every moment of temptation to veg out watching it to learning and practicing the things we always wished we could do.

So we did it.

Unplugged that bad boy.

That beautiful, 40 inch, flat-screened, dream.

unplugged.

For 30 days.

Instead of wishful thinking, we are wishful doing.

For a lot of you, TV may not be your distraction. It may be something else.

But we encourage you to find what that is and replace it with what you are dreaming of.

Even if for one hour a day you practice whatever that is, let it be your season of doing. 

Great people never became great without trying and messing up a few times.

A little focus was all they needed,

or maybe it was 30 days. 

I will be sharing daily about our process, so stay tuned, lots of moments and real feelings coming your way!