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- How To Soar Like An Eagle
This morning when I fired up my Apple Mac, I was shocked to see that my stats on another writing platform had fallen from an all-time daily high of 2,900 views with 2k reads last month to an all-time low of 147 views and 67 reads so far this month!
At this rate, I seriously doubt that I will achieve the same stats that I had in August with 15.1K views and 11K reads, or those of September, 36k views and 25k reads!
I don’t really know for sure why this has happened, a glitch in the algorithm perhaps, or maybe something or somebody is trying to tell me something.
Perhaps somebody has taken a look at my stories and decided ‘This is not us, not who we are, not what we are about.” It matters not.
I have no God-given right to success. I know many other writers who have been here as long as I have and have never reached the wonderful heights that I temporarily have.
I am truly thankful for what I have, my health, the love of an amazing woman, and my love of writing. Things could be a heck of a lot worse. I must also mention that I am having growing success on other platforms, including my very own website.
I think about what else is going on in the world like the war in Ukraine and the Middle East, the hurricanes in Florida, Helene and Milton, the people all around the world who are breathing their very last breath on this mote of dust in the cosmos. Everything is relative. Be thankful for what you have got rather than miserable for what you have lost. Tomorrow is another day.
So I am going to use this decline positively, to inspire me to do better, if not here than elsewhere. I must say, many times in the past I have suffered a decline in my good fortune, and I have bounced right back and did better than ever before. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.
When I was a very young child I was sexually abused by a member of my own family and a neighbour. At school, I got beat up to within an inch of my life by a gang of fifteen bullies, just for the fun of it, who put me in hospital with a fractured skull.
On leaving school and entering the workforce I was seriously assaulted by a fellow employee, again, for nothing more than a depraved sense of fun. Those hard times were why I left that violent city never to return.
In later years, I rose from a very poor working-class background, when I was declared a lost cause by my teachers, to do two university degrees. That helped me to carve out a career as a successful writer and as a teacher.
Sadly, I went on to suffer not one but two setbacks in the form of ruinously contentious divorces. I lost four children who I have barely spoken to since due to malicious parental alienation. That was way back in 1995 and 2005 respectively.
Post 2005, I lost my own language academy and piano bar in the south of Spain for nothing more than the vindictive revenge of my second ex-wife. The result of those losses was I lost two homes, two cars and a third business as a freelance English teacher. In the end, I spent several years barely surviving, just one step from living on the streets.
Eventually, I managed to get back on my feet and moved to live in Japan, where I am presently based. In 2021, I had a serious accident when I fell off my bike at great speed and broke my left hip and leg. To make matters worse, the accident caused my vital organs to begin to fail. I was in the hospital at death's door for three months and in excruciating pain for a total of six months. I got over it. That’s life. We all have our cross to bear.
A few days ago I saw a video on Facebook of a very young bear trying to follow its mother to the top of a snowy mountain. Several times, almost at the top of the mountain, the poor little bear slid all the way back down. It just kept on going whilst its mother patiently waited at the top. Eventually, after half a dozen attempts, the bear made it to the top. I am that little bear.
The takeaways of this story are what I have learned;
Never, ever give up
If you fall, get right back up and try again
Never lose your faith in your innate ability to succeed
With that, I am not only going to get to the top of that mountain, I am going to soar like the eagle that I am.
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