I think I have mentioned before that I’ve been online with Noom, learning about the psychology of eating, weight loss, and healthy lifestyle. Yesterday evening as I was finishing the day’s lesson, this came up and I knew immediately what it meant for me. I was caught.

I have wondered quite a bit in the last three months “Why isn’t Shirley writing and staying in touch with the world of readers?” I guess she just didn’t feel like it. She is retired now and doesn’t do things she doesn’t feel like doing.

No, wait. That is so “not true”, on several levels. Does anyone ever get to stop doing anything they don’t feel like doing? I’m still doing some of those things, and I realize there are benefits involved. And it isn’t really that I don’t feel like writing – it’s more that it takes time to write well and to say something worth putting down. And strangely, for me, there is something sad and serious about introspective writing. I just haven’t wanted to add “sad and serious” to my life. I’m ignoring that. It’s difficult and challenging to write consistently.

But I am a writer, and writers need to make writing a habit. Noom has caught me and made me commit to a blog post this morning, knowing that I would feel better in the long run if I faced the challenge. There is science behind that, and more. Facing challenges is a matter of the spirit. Realizing that something is difficult, and then doing it anyway makes me more able to do it again in the future. Another good thing about Noom is that it asks me to find some affirmations and repeat them to myself regularly. Here are mine:

I will be blogging in August about a lot of random things, about Noom, about the end of summer, and about facing challenges. Would love to hear your comments.