These days there’s so much in the world to be mad, fearful, and anxious about. Crack open just any mainstream news publication and you can count on a shitstorm of doom, gloom, and negativity. Endless campaigns devised to win our hearts and minds and to try to tell us the kind of person we should be, how we should think, what we should feel. You can expect the same outcome on most social media platforms, especially the one that begins with “F” that we don’t discuss much on Steemit.

Amidst this tsunami of this negativity and propaganda, imagine trying to make a living as a writer. This is a career path that oftentimes feels like climbing Mt. Everest on a tightrope with no net and slippery shoes. It goes without saying that to preserve some shred of sanity you have to find creative ways to extract the positive out of life.

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“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” ~ Golda Meir

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It took me twenty-three years of extremely hard work and rejections to find success as an author. In those decades I became quite adept at learning to see clearly through the impenetrable darkness. By some stroke of luck it eventually worked out.

The most important survival strategy I learned in the trenches is this...celebrate each and every small victory.

I can trace my career backwards and I see that, as I felt more desperate, the celebrations became more frequent.

I’ll never forget when I typed those last few words of the final draft of my first novel. It was a cold winter day and my wife and I went to a local restaurant in the middle of the afternoon. We had the entire restaurant to ourselves and it was as though they were open just for us. In that moment we existed in a bubble of pure elation. At the time we had no clue the places that book would take us but it felt significant and we celebrated the joy of it.

A particularly large goal will be realized in the next few months (the details of which will be shared later.) To celebrate the joy of it, my plan is to hike the Kumano Kodo Nakahechi route in Japan. This trek will consist of reflective day long hikes in the mystical Japanese forest surrounding Kyoto followed by lengthy soaks in natural hot springs.

Each year I live the less I know. Life is a process of emptying ourselves, with the goal of becoming nothing more than a chalice that captures each individual moment. After nearly a half century of being a passenger on this wild and wonderful spaceship we call Earth there’s one bit of advice I feel confident in sharing.

Trust yourself.

Most four year olds understand this perfectly. It sounds simple but it’s not easy. Each day life will try its best to beat it out of you in every way possible. The harder you fight back, the tougher the obstacles become.

The beauty of it all is one day it won’t matter how difficult the obstacles were. If you keep fanning those flames one day you will wake up a master.

Yours in the Chain,

Eric Vance Walton.

(Gif sourced from Giphy.com)

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