You Can Blow Out My Candle, But You'll Never Put Out My Fire
42 Songs About Persevering to Achieve Your Goals

With all due respect to Britney Spears, oops! I did it again.

I left you hanging.

In my very first post, I said I wanted to try to write one post a week. But as it does, life intervened, and it’s turned out to be more like every two weeks. Once upon a time, I probably would’ve overthought that and maybe been just perfectionistic enough to give up altogether because I didn’t do what I said I was going to do.

If you know me personally, you know that doing what you said you were going to do is one of my “things,” so you’re either chuckling at the irony of it all (even I am a little), or you’re feeling empathy because you know how I hate to disappoint people. Either way, that’s fair. 

But I’m learning to say, “So be it.” It is, as they say, what it is.

We left off with me deciding to set a goal of completing 600 Camp Gladiator workouts before my second year of membership ended. At the time, I needed to complete 48 workouts in 34 days to achieve the goal.

If you’ll remember, I believed there to be three distinct sections in my story arc: 

• The Decision 
• The Effort
• The Outcome

The previous post was all about The Decision.

Now for The Effort.

It was time to go to work. To quote another song — which is NOT in this soundtrack because … well, language, people! (I didn’t even realize how bad it was until I looked it up!) — there was nuthin’ to it but to do it.

I wish I could say the next 34 days were a breeze, but I can’t. It was tough! More than once, I thought, “What the heck have I done?”

Not only was it a challenge to make time for the extra workouts I had to do to achieve the goal, practically every part of my body hurt. Perhaps that’s why this meme made me laugh a little harder than many folks would:

But you know what? An interesting thing happened. I had originally posted my goal on Instagram and Facebook for a couple of reasons: 1) to track my progress and 2) to put it out there because … well, I wanted to do what I said I was going to do. I thought that posting it where others could see it would motivate me to do it. But what really surprised me was how many people took notice.

It didn’t happen immediately, but as I got further into what I called the #questfor600, my friends and followers began to encourage me. Some friends “hearted” my posts; others posted funny memes. Even a few people I didn’t know started to follow my quest.

In my Sunday School class, we were doing a study based on Heather Holleman’s book, Seated With Christ: Living Freely in a Culture of Comparison. During one of our discussions, we were talking about how what we see on social media is often not an accurate representation of reality … it’s even sometimes a display of vanity. As I recall, one of the ladies asked how many times people wouldn’t post selfies on social media unless they were all made up and dressed perfectly, or something to that effect. I jokingly commented, “Don’t ask me … all I post is sweaty photos of myself!”

It was then that I learned I had a handful of wonderful ladies following my quest.

Wow.

It really did inspire me.

I’ve mentioned more than once that I also have some incredible teammates who helped me work toward my goal. I did a lot of extra work on my own, but they worked out with me, too, and they held me accountable and cheered me on.

Some of my teammates may not have been present with me, but they still cheered me on … whether they knew it or not:

Even my beloved cat Tux hung out with me when I did workouts at home!

This process was not a short one, so neither is this playlist. Because of that, I’m not posting all the songs individually … just the full playlist. But I do love some of the lyrics, and I showed you last time that I love what I call “quote posts,” so I leave you with a few that include some of my favorite lyrics from this soundtrack:

The view will never change
Unless you decide to change it
Don’t feel like it today
Just show up anyways

Superchick, “It’s On”

You can blow out my candle
But you’ll never put out my fire

Betty Who, “Blow Out My Candle”

Every scar on my skin
Is a beautiful reminder
Of a moment when I didn’t give in 
And I walked through fire

Hannah Kerr, “Warrior”

And here’s the playlist:

Open in Spotify

But did I make it?

Stay tuned!