Celebrate the little things. Celebrate your progress!
These get an emphatic heck yes from me — unless of course they’re my own.
It’s a little trick my mind plays: I believe you should absolutely celebrate your subtle milestones. Mine are just the result of time passing, and I don’t feel like I did anything worth celebrating.
(Maybe it’s imposter syndrome talking.)
But I did, and that’s why I’m here writing about it.
Subtle milestones feel nebulous. From the outside, they might seem like a nothing. But internally, their meaning can be huge.
Because growth is gradual, space can feel liminal, and the next phase might be unknown. It’s those subtle milestones that encourage us forward anyway, being markers of time that help us make meaning along the way.
My first tax season from the sidelines
April is a notoriously tiresome month, as it marks end of Canadian tax season in a household of accountants.
Except this year, my April was a bit different — it was my first tax season in over a decade outside the grind. (Maternity leaves aside.)
Still, to my mind, May 1st is an accountants’ holiday, where we’re recovering and reflecting: On a small scale, we’re most likely recovering from (and reflecting on) the notorious Tax Party the night before.
But on a much larger scale, we’re starting the process of recovering from the burnout that surely set in a month and a half ago, and reflecting on the changes we wish to make in our lives now that it’s May.
This May 1st, I was reflecting on what it meant to be on the sidelines this time: On a small scale, the view from the tax season spouse’s side.
(That’s a thing — we spouses always get a shout-out at the annual Christmas party for our unwavering support!)
But on a much larger scale, I was reflecting on what had shifted and grown since I stepped away from my public accounting role.
Nine months out
For me, May 1st marked nine months out of the profession. In other words, I’ve moved through a veritable creative gestation period during which a new identity and way of living have been developing.
Yet I still feel like I’m mid-journey, having closed out one story but not fully settled in the next. Where the new story is ready, but the habits, sense of identity, and nervous system are still catching up.
Stepping away from my day job wasn’t like flipping a switch, where suddenly everything changed. Eliminating the environment and shaking up the daily routine don’t automatically eliminate the habits and mindsets that helped you survive and thrive there in the first place.
That’s what the last nine months have been about.
One hundred blog posts in
Last month I also got to celebrate this blogger’s milestone — 100 published blog posts!
When I first started out blogging, having a hundred blog posts published was a lofty goal. It felt meaningful, something to aspire toward. It also felt like some magical milestone that would “unlock” writer superpowers.
It would feel like I made it.
But it turns out, there’s no magic to it. You wrangle your ideas, you do your best to improve your writing every time, and you keep hitting publish.
The meaning in the milestone, I discovered, wasn’t that I’d “made it”.
It was that I chose it.
It was the answer to the question: Who am I creatively, and how do I express that?
I have a Post-it note on my wall: an agreement between myself and the Creative Force that says, “You take care of the quality, I’ll take care of the quantity”. Signed and dated.
Except I was doing a lot of painting at the time.
This was part of an exercise from The Artist’s Way, meant to keep creative blocks at bay while we do the vulnerable work of connecting with our creativity in an honest, authentic way.
It’s meant to keep us going — one of the hardest parts of creative self-expression. To keep creating through fear, through doubt, through creative blocks, and through liminal spaces, all in a world that still struggles to value its artists.
So I held up my end of the deal after all… I just let the creativity decide how to express itself.
The subtle milestones are worth celebrating
Set aside the tangible awards, titles, and widely-recognized accomplishments for a moment, because despite the demands and distractions of the outside world, we’re all here creating.
So whether you’ve hit 100 published blog posts, your first Substack, or you filled a sketchbook, go on and celebrate that subtle milestone and what it means to you.
And if you haven’t started yet? The milestone might be that you’re staying afloat while you navigate the liminal stages of life, or stepping decidedly out of one way of living and firmly into the next.
Even when invisible to the outside world, these milestones can be truly impactful to you.
That’s worth celebrating.
Originally published on my Substack → Debit This, Create That | Elida | Substack
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