Are We There Yet? vol. 125

Early in the pandemic, I wrote about the War and Peace challenge. There was a book club that was reading 12 pages of the novel each day during the pandemic and the thinking then was that, at 1200 plus pages, the reader would finish the book in about 100 days and the pandemic would be over. This was very wishful thinking given what we know now. I enthusiastically started this challenge, and my thinking was that even if the book got boring, it was only 12 pages a day.

I hit the wall at around page 600, just halfway through the book. Reading my 12 pages during the day seemed like torture when there were so many other worthy things I could be doing. Reading at night was a huge fail as I generally lasted less than two pages before falling asleep. War and Peace was my melatonin and I encourage anyone having trouble sleeping to pick up a copy. 

In the moment, it’s easy to take on a big challenge and think that it will be easy to accomplish. As many of us know, the hard part, like in many things in life, is having the drive and persistence to keep going when the excitement of the new endeavor has worn off. 

Take care and stay safe.

BOOK:

Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis

Viola Davis writes “This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.

Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.”