Going through all of my notes

It's amazing how much paperwork you accumulate over the span of about ten/twelve years when writing a novel.
I decided to go through all of my old notes on the story since I began writing it and it's amazing too see how far I have come.
I may not have everything figured out, but with in these notes lies the complete story, I just have to shift through them to find the little gold nuggets.

It's true that I have underestimated how far along I have come. When you are so close to the project it's easy to get lost and think that nothing is happening.
It was two of my best friends that were the ones that made me step back and appreciate how much I had accomplished and how close I was to the finished novel.
When I went through my cabinet yesterday to get all of my old notes for the story, I thought I was going for a small stack of paper but it was five or ten times bigger than I had originally thought.

We always judge our selves so harshly and I realized that all the hard work I had been doing over the years wasn't worthless, it was a preparation for this. It's important to remember that when you  are doing something you love, something that makes you happy, that it is never a waist of time.

At least now I have learned to appreciate all of the sleepless nights over the years working on this story. All the times I was glued to the laptop in a writing frenzy, to exited to stop even for a minute. I know I am not getting paid to write, or to invest all of my time doing it, but it doesn't matter for me. This is what I love and one day, probably sooner than I think, I know it will pay off. Even if it doesn't I will never regret one minute of it ; )