As I was coming back from my walk/run this morning, I saw a few people staring into the sky. I couldn’t imagine what had them so enthralled until I looked up and saw the biggest, most beautiful rainbow arcing across the sky. Now rainbows are hard to come by in general, but in NY they are almost unheard of, so this was truly a site to behold.

Heading home, I thought about how, if I had not gotten up to exercise I would never have seen this rainbow. But for the past few months, a friend and I have been meeting 3 mornings a week at 6:30am to walk. Now before you stop reading and think, “oh she’s one of those people,” let me assure you I am not. I enjoy exercise but I also enjoy sleep and like many of us, I had gotten into a rut with my life where I was not working out enough and the scale began to show it. Weight for me, like many women, has been a battle my entire life. I yo-yo dieted, gaining and losing the same 30 pounds for years. It was not until I had my son 3 years ago that it became less about weight and more about health and fitness. Luckily, despite my extra pounds, I have always been a healthy eater, have low cholesterol and low blood pressure. But having my son made me want to be more active, to live life with him and be truly happy with myself. So I started to play tennis again and watched what I ate. But this article is not about weight, it is about responsibility. I finally said to myself, it is time, I am the only one responsible for putting food in my mouth and making my body move. No one can do it for me and all the busy mom excuses in the world will not change that.

The same goes for writing. When I embarked on my freelance career, I knew I would have to work twice as hard to get jobs, network my butt off and just be out there all day, every day. I had to take responsibility for not only finding work, but delivering it on time, pleasing my clients and not procrastinating. I realized I could spend all this time surfing the web, reading blogs, twittering, reading Facebook, etc. but in that time, I could also be writing. Because even if I did not have a client at the time, the sheer act of writing was what I needed to keep the juices flowing and just remind me why I do this in the first place. And I find that when I help friends who need content for their website, or a write a letter for someone, or re-do their resume, even though they don’t pay me, inevitably a paying gig walks through the door during or immediately after. Maybe it is karma. Maybe it is just coincidence. But I think it is because I am making my own destiny, so to speak. By taking responsibility, I am making things happen. And you can too.