Written. Did it. Done.

It’s a slightly surreal thing to be sitting here on January 31st having wholly showed up to my commitment to myself.

I did it. I wrote every single day from January 6th, the day I started doing this, to January 31st, today.

I am a good talker. I don’t know how convinced anyone else might be by me, but there have been so many times throughout my life when I have set out, all guns blazing, aiming to commit to something, convincing myself that I really, really mean it. I’m sure you know what comes next: within a few days or a couple of weeks at best, the chain of continuity gets broken, and from that moment onwards there is a human, imperfect story to tell about the process.

I’ve done it with yoga, running, writing, taking photographs, drawing, blogging, haiku writing, writing a newsletter, running a life coaching business, teaching A Course in Miracles, going to 12 step meetings (never did 90 in 90), training for events… the list goes on, and it is long.

With this, the story is still incredibly human and messy – but I will ALWAYS be able to look back and say that I fucking did it. I proved to myself that I can set an intention, one that is truly, deeply meaningful to me, and trust myself to fulfil it. I can commit. I can be like those people who just keep showing up, day after day, week after week. As absolutely okay as it would have been if I had missed a day (as I came so close to doing a couple of times), I am so pleased and proud that I am sitting here today knowing that I have bashed out a LOT of words in the last 26 days, knowing that I showed up to this space every single damn day.

This isn’t really like me. I am passionate but inconsistent. If long-term, regular consistency were a guest at a dinner party being hosted to represent my personality, its voice would be drowned out by the dramatic, wildly fluctuating presence of inconsistency. When I did my counselling training and we had to choose our core values, we were advised to consider a ‘stretch’ value, one that we didn’t yet embody but wanted to grow into. Consistency was my instantaneous response and I’ve never wavered from that answer. It is one of the things I struggle with the most.

* * *

Sometimes in life – very rarely, I have found – we prove to ourselves that we can change. Something shifts within us in a fundamental way, something beyond will, beyond consciousness, something from the depths, from the place beyond personality… from the level, perhaps, of the soul. As a result, we change.

This happened to me when, after years of spiralling out of control, I experienced complete and total surrender and let go of drinking alcohol and taking drugs aged 18. My entire sense of myself and of what was possible in my life changed when I got sober.

It happened with my ex. I realised that I actually was capable of being in a long-term relationship. I cannot tell you how life-altering that experience was for me.

It has happened over the last year as I have finally made the kind of money that I have spent my entire adult life thinking was beyond me, out of reach, beyond my grasp or abilities somehow. Again, that shift in identity that has come about as a result of this is nothing short of profound.

And it happened this month, as I showed up one day after another to this process.

The insight I have around this is that each of these areas was so deeply important to me that somehow, through a mixture of will and some mysterious, super-conscious shift, I became more committed to the goal than to the status quo, and I changed as a result.

I believe human beings are capable of change. I believe we can and must prove certain things to ourselves at different times in our lives. I know for me – or at least it appears to be the case – that the thing I’m trying to change needs to matter to me so fucking deeply that I will not let the shitty inner critic/arsehole/ego part of me win. This month, I often felt unmotivated, especially late at night (including tonight!), but I never stopped being committed. The difference between the two is ginormous.

So, I’ve done it. I’ve fulfilled my commitment to myself. What now?

Well, I’m going to own what I want. I want to get an agent this year, and a publishing deal for two (possibly three!) books. I know exactly what each of them will be about. I know what I want and why it matters to me. And I’ve proved something very important to myself through doing this – that I can “turn pro,” to use Steven Pressfield’s language. My dream feels sort of possible to me today. I cannot quite believe I’m writing that, but as I have said all month, I am not here for hyperbole; I am trying to write what feels true.

I think I’ll continue to post fairly regularly, but I’ve yet to decide a schedule. I’m going to take this weekend off and make a decision on Monday about what’s next. In the past, that’s exactly the kind of thing I would say but not actually do. Now, I think I might actually be able to trust myself to do it.

Thank you to EVERYONE who has been with me on this journey. Whether you have read one post, or all 26, I am inexpressibly grateful. Your comments and feedback, your sharing of your own experiences and your encouragement have nourished and energised me every day. I have always wanted to be a writer who writes, to have a big body of work behind me, to be prolific, to be able to look someone in the eye and say “I’m a writer” and to hold their gaze and know in my body that I am, and I’m getting there. I really, really hope that the next sentence is true: that I am only just getting started.

What about you?

Loads and loads and loads of love,

Elloa x

(Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash. Thank you, Laura. I like this picture a lot.)