1.  Ignore the naysayers, real and imaginary
2. Get Over It: Don’t Dwell In, or On, the Fall
3. Just Do It, AKA, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

I’ve had some big falls off of the bicycle of life.

When I was suffering from chronic depression in college, I accumulated seven Fs on my transcript because I wasn’t able to handle the necessary hoop jumping to get certain classes dropped – which I should never have been signed up for in the first place. *Sigh*

You would think seven Fs would kill your college career for good, and yet, even when my appeal was denied to get some of them retroactively removed, I was still able to get my master’s degree in Linguistics, a very difficult field.

How did I do it?

(1) Ignore the naysayers, real and imaginary

I didn’t allow my negative self-talk, or anyone else, to deter me from my goal to enter the field of Linguistics and to finish with my Master’s degree. When I had to face the head of the Linguistics department with my seven Fs, I held my head high and said, “I am aware this looks bad, but I know I can do this.” After his initial skepticism (boy did he hit me with some heavy condescension!), it was he who invited me to apply for the Master’s program two years later.

(2) Get Over It: Don’t Dwell In, or On, the Fall

I know there are many people who would have given up for good upon failing out of college – as I essentially did (I was required to take a year off before I was permitted to try again). It is for that reason that I trot out this story over and over again. I did not dwell in the story of my failure, deciding to be a college dropout for the rest of my life. Nor do I dwell on that story of failure, by using it as a “poor me” story. Instead my story of failure has become a story of success.

(3) Just Do It, AKA, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

Get back on the bike. When my academic probation was over, I held my transcript in my hand and met with the head of the Linguistics department. That took tenacity. Guts!

In the end, really, you have nothing to lose.

Currently I’ve fallen off the blogging bicycle.

Somehow I’ve let the weeks slip by and have not posted in two months! It never used to matter so much when I let time pass without posting, but now this blogging thing is more than a purging of thoughts to me – I care about what I’m doing in this space – and I don’t want to lose all my readers by being perceived as an unreliable poster.

How do I solve this according to the above strategy?

(1) Ignore the naysayers, real and imaginary

For me, aside from my fears that my readers all hate me now, is my extreme writer’s block stemming from, “What exactly do I write to fill in the blanks of several weeks gone by?” Seriously, where do I start? So much has happened in the past two months! Sebastian has begun eating solid foods, has eight teeth, enjoys swimming (being held and swirled around in deep water), and is crawling!

(2) Get Over It: Don’t Dwell In, or On, the Fall

I messed up.

Why didn’t I just post the following?

:: Summer Break ::

“Dear readers, I’ll be taking a summer break. I will resume with weekly Keep or Purge posts sometime in September.

Enjoy your summer!”

I refuse to identify myself as a failed blogger. I have blogging goals that I have not yet reached and I’ll never get there if I keep replaying that negative self talk over and over and over. Yes, I’m upset with myself for not at least foreseeing that I would need to take a summer break and alerting my readers to that fact. But what’s done is done.

(3) Just Do It, AKA, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

And here I am! I’ve done it. I was terrified to post again, but now I have! I’m back on that horse, or bicycle.

Or whatever.