When I had a full time job, my personal life rhythm was established by my schedule. I had a long commute to work, and had to leave home early to make it there by 9am. My bed time was at 11pm, mostly non-negotiable, as I was used to getting up really early, writing, having breakfast and going to work. Even on weekends, I rarely could sleep late, as my rhythm was set up.
Since I’ve been self-employed for a while, I’m able to make my own hours, and at first, I was able to keep up with the same rhythm. But during the spring, things started to change. I was teaching late evenings, and was getting home too late to make it to my 11pm bed time. That led me to not be able to wake up as early as I’d have liked either.
For over two years I’ve been participating on a chat on Twitter called 
I moved from Belo Horizonte, Brazil to New York, USA 15 years ago today. I had no idea what to expect, or what was ahead. I knew I was in a relationship, and that I was going to study the MBA. That was all. I also had a few aspirations in mind, to change careers and become a consultant (the term coaching wasn’t around back then), and possibly a writer. I was writing a fiction story in Portuguese at the time, it took me a couple of years to finish it, if I’m not mistaken, but the file was deleted accidently, and the story was never published, and never read from start to finish by someone other than me.
For the past few years, as long as I have time available, I have created gifts for friends and family, instead of buying them something. I started a little over two years ago, by drawing the flower that is shown at the top right of this post’s image. At the time, I was taking photos of flowers and trying to draw them. This was the first time I actually created a gift - I printed the photo, and drew the flower, put them both in a picture frame, and gave it to Robert Baker, a friend/spiritual teacher/mentor, who sadly passed away a year ago this Sunday. It meant a lot to me that he received it graciously, and displayed it right away. In most situations, I don’t receive the same response though. Out of all the picture frame gifts I created for friends, I’ve only seen one displayed at another friend’s house, and it warmed my heart when I saw it. The others may have kept it somewhere hidden, or they may have thrown it away for all I know.
I’ve been reflecting on this quote by Maya Angelou: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will not forget how you made them feel." for the last several weeks, after two dearest people in my life passed away unexpectedly within 30 days from each other. All I keep thinking about is what they meant to me, even if for only the four years we knew each other in one case, and twelve years in another.
I keep getting this image of taking the first step to achieving something, and then taking the next one, and the next, and the next. The first step simply isn’t enough anymore.
A few weeks ago I wrote an article inspired in part by a Creative Writing course I was taking, and the not so positive feedback I received on my first homework. Each week we got different assignments on non-fiction and fiction, and we were required to focus on the many aspects of creative writing. I could easily have decided not to come back, but I really wanted to go through it, especially since some of the writing exercises were outside my comfort zone.
All we do in life takes practice. You may have heard that Malcolm Gladwell explored the fact that it takes at least 10,000 hours practicing a craft; and he gave examples of famous musicians, professionals in IT, sports and others; for someone to really become a master of it. It makes sense, and he presents the research and examples in his book 
. He also talked about it in this 
When I wrote about