Embracing the hash tag

I spent the early morning watching the sun come up over the Cascades and sipping coffee, feeling depleted and exhausted despite it only being Tuesday. Sometimes when I feel this way it helps to write out goals for the days and months to come. For any of you who know me well, I am focused and goal-oriented in a way that’s probably annoying to those around me but the cats don’t seem to care so I go with my natural instincts. In all seriousness, I find if I write it down, it will come.

Six years ago when I was writing RIVERSONG and taking care of two small children I had my daily goals or mantras – activities I was committed to doing every day -scribbled on a Post-it note which I hung on my computer as a physical reminder. I don’t know what happened to that Post-it note but I can remember the essence of those goals. They haven’t changed much all these years later.

So this morning I wrote them down again. For some reason, probably because I spend way too much time on social media trying to reach new readers, I converted them to hash tags. I know. I just felt your collective eye roll. It’s embarrassing that a woman who spends as much time as I trying to capture experience with words would find it appropriate to express something with what we used to call the pound sign and a short phrase that used to go inside a sentence. I get that this makes me slightly ridiculous, especially give my age. I resisted this whole hash tag phenomenon for years, trust me. As a lover of words I worry about how our younger generations are changing the language with text conversions and the like. But the hash tag thing is in my system and now I can’t stop. In conclusion, I’ve decided to embrace it as something fun and as a new way to conscisely sum up thoughts or experience on any given day on any given subject. #HashtagsAreFun

That said, I apologize in advance for what you’re about to read next.

Anyway, some of my goals are to write 2500 words a day of fiction, break a serious sweat with some form of exercise, drink 8 glasses of water a day, take my vitamins, get 10 thousand steps so my Fitbit lights up like a Christmas tree and to read at least 60 minutes a day. (I have a few others but they’re a little more on the serious side and subject for another post).

Here are my hashtags.

#ButtInSeat

#BreakASweat

#8Glasses

#Vitamins

#10PlusSteps

#amreading60

What are yours? Care to share? I’d love to hear them. But be forewarned, I’m known to steal (borrow) for fiction purposes. Don’t be surprised if one shows up in a book.

Regardless of your goals or if you put them in a hash tag, keep swimming, friends. We can do this. #JustKeepSwimming