My brand new marvy Maytag stove inspired this post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The stove is stainless steel with a black ceramic surface, convection cooking, a hidden lower cooking element\u00a0and a steam clean option.\u00a0 It was born and bred right here in the USA.\u00a0 It\u00a0replaces a stove that was new in 1986 when our house was built.\u00a0 We got our old stove with the house when we bought it in 1993.\u00a0 It was a\u00a0coil eye stove and the thing was so old that we couldn't find any eyes\u00a0that fit properly to replace\u00a0one that died.\u00a0 My hubby had reinstalled the upper heating element in the oven a couple of times.\u00a0 We had more stains than you could count\u00a0on the lower heating element.\u00a0 Cleaning meant \"Easy Off\" fumes and lots of elbow grease.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The new stove is beautiful and it's expecting a little Maytag friend soon - a stainless dishwasher that should be delivered in early February.\u00a0 I don't even want to talk about how gross our dishwasher is.\u00a0 Suffice it to say, the thing was - like our stove- new in 1986, purchased with the house and it is now falling apart - literally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was staring at the stove and thinking about life last night.\u00a0 See, the stove and dishwasher were purchased with a combination of writing money and the Christmas bonus from my day job. And last night while I stared at it, the little hamster that turns the wheel in my head woke up and\u00a0commenced running.\u00a0 When\u00a0my hamster brain ran hard enough, the light bulb turned on - and I smiled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I've always\u00a0believed that I'd be successful\u00a0when my fiction writing paid enough to allow me to quit my day job and write full time.\u00a0 That's still my goal.\u00a0 I still believe that being a full time author is where I'll be happiest and most fulfilled.\u00a0 But my stove made me realize that maybe I was committing the same error as our politicans in Congress.\u00a0 My stove made me realize that compromise\u00a0doesn't always mean failure - sometimes it's a hallmark of success.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like just about everyone everywhere I've had to make a bunch of compromises since the bottom fell out of the economy.\u00a0 I've had to get to the point where I\u00a0prioritized bills - the houshold bills first, then my eldest son's college expenses and then everything else.\u00a0 The everything else means that I pay what I can on everything else and either the companies deal with that or they don't.\u00a0 And because I grew up in a perienally poor household where I got stuck talking to all those creditors, having a re-run of that era had convinced me that I was a complete failure.\u00a0 My stove made me realize that wasn't true.<\/p>\n
I've reached a point with my day job and my writing where I could get my eldest back to UCF for the Spring Semester of his Junior year and we could\u00a0replace our ancient\u00a0stove and dishwasher.\u00a0 I'm not writing on my fiction full time but I do essentially write full time.\u00a0 (My day job mainly consists of legal research and writing.) That means that I haven't reached my goal -- but I have progressed on my journey.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And success isn't measured solely by reaching that one goal.\u00a0 If I reach it -- when I reach it -- there will be a new goal.\u00a0 If\u00a0I don't have goals\u00a0I have no direction for\u00a0my life.\u00a0 So there will\u00a0always be a goal.\u00a0 But the goal is only a mile marker - it's not the finish line.\u00a0 As long as I'm running towards the next marker and making progress, then I'm not a complete failure.\u00a0 Even if the phone is still ringing and my answering machine is still full of\u00a0hang up calls, I'm not a complete failure.\u00a0 I'd only be a complete failure if I failed to try and just threw up my hands. I'd only be a complete failure if I\u00a0stopped setting goals and heading towards them.<\/p>\n
I haven't said \"I can't.\"\u00a0 I've said, \"I haven't gotten there yet.\"\u00a0 And I'm still in the race and heading in the right direction. \u00a0 I've made progress and the next time I doubt that, I'll look at my shiny new stove.\u00a0 It's a concrete reminder that success isn't a destination - it's a journey.\u00a0 In our horrendous present economy, many people have been forced to face things they'd rather not, and do things they'd\u00a0sworn not to.\u00a0 It would be awfully easy to say - I\u00a0can't or I won't or I quit.\u00a0 No matter how tempting it is to throw in the towel, I owe it to myself and my\u00a0family to continue running along the road, heading for the next mile marker.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It's important to\u00a0allow ourselves time to stop and assess when we reach certain plateaus.\u00a0 The stove might not seem like much to lots of folks, but it means a lot to me.\u00a0 Success is a very individual thing but certain things about it are common to all of us.\u00a0 Success is\u00a0not getting to one place or achieving one thing - it's staying in the race and keeping that towel firmly in hand, ready to wipe sweat from our brows, tears from our eyes --- or sometimes,\u00a0 just sometimes to wave in a cheer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The next time you're in a place where you're thinking of throwing in the towel because you're not where you wanted to be or planned to be, stop and take a look around at where you are.\u00a0 You may not be at the next mile marker yet, but you're not at the last one\u00a0either.\u00a0 Like me, you're on the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Success is a journey.\u00a0 We\u00a0may not make the trip the way we planned and we may have to stop and plot a new route.\u00a0 None of that means we got it wrong.\u00a0 In fact, all of it means we're getting it right.\u00a0\u00a0Sometimes, along the way, life may throw in an appliance or two. If you look into the stainless steel hard enough, intently enough, your dreams might reflect right back at you.\u00a0 \u00a0They're still there - bright and shiny and waiting, just waiting for you to reach out and grab 'em on your way to all your future success.\u00a0<\/p>\n
See - in the duck lady's house,\u00a0a Maytag just might turn out to\u00a0be a crystal ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My brand new marvy Maytag stove inspired this post.\u00a0 The stove is stainless steel with a black ceramic surface, convection cooking, a hidden lower cooking element\u00a0and a steam clean option.\u00a0 It was born and bred right here in the USA.\u00a0 It\u00a0replaces a stove that was new in 1986 when our house was built.\u00a0 We got ...continue reading \"Sometimes A Maytag Isn’t Just A Maytag\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2106"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2114,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions\/2114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}