No, I’m not referring to the famed Mars rover that just touched down yesterday after a more than 6 month journey. But how amazing is that? I’m talking about the fact that Emily Dickinson continued to prolifically write, even in the face of no real encouragement from her parents or those in the publishing world at the time. Only 7 of her poems were published during her lifetime, but writing was a passion she could not let die, a flower she continued to nurture, a hunger unabated.

I can be really hard on myself at times for not meeting goals I’ve set. Like on this project, where my goal is 5 poems a day and I’m dreadfully behind. But I am pretty proud of the fact that I’ve continued to write publicly for the past 11 years. I have persevered, even when my stats or followers didn’t sky rocket. I’ve been honest about times when the words wouldn’t come, but I’ve never given in to thinking it wasn’t worth it. Even if no one ever read my words, like Emily, I still need to write them.

When I taught 6th grade, I constantly encouraged kids to persevere in the face of difficulty, telling them that quitting was the only way to fail. Like the NASA engineers who had to wait 6 months to see if they would be successful in landing the rover on Mars, we may not immediately know the full impact our words, our art or our work, but we only fail if we stop doing it. So hang in there. I’m rooting for you, and I hope you are for me too.

Here’s today’s offering, which includes a reference to Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle.

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