Back to Writing on Thursday

Thursday used to be a tough day for me to find time to write. At the beginning of the daily writing habit, I’d find myself jotting down a quick sentence in an Evernote note on my phone, either on the train or in the five minutes I had before an appointment. The line would say something like, “Just writing one sentence to keep the daily writing habit alive.” It was on many days like this that I began questioning how important it was to keep up with writing EVERY day. This morning, for example, writing seems to be reducing my levels of stress. On those days that I just described, when I’d be writing the single sentence, writing seemed to be increasing my levels of stress, which was the opposite of the effect I was hoping it would have.

Looking back now, I can’t immediately figure out why I had a hard time finding time to write in the mornings. Part of it may have had to do with feeling the relief of the weekend approaching, which I then took as permission to initiate the shift from my “week” mindset to my “weekend” mindset.

This week I started a new morning routine, which makes it easier for me to find time to write in the mornings on a consistent basis. There’s an ongoing question in my mind about how much routine is good routine and I’m hoping to publish a post on that soon. For now, I’ve decided to try out the new morning routine for at least a couple of weeks, then reevaluate the effects of it once the trial period is over. One immediate impact of deciding to test the routine for two weeks is that it helped me sit down and write this morning, rather than do something else with the time I have allocated to write, such as clearing out my email inboxes.

For now, it’s feeling pretty good to write on Thursday mornings. I think it also helps to establish a sense of normalcy and consistency as the end of the week begins to approach. For a long time, the week would seem to start slowly on Monday, slowly buiding to a crescendo on the weekend, until Monday morning rolled around again. The weeks still roll like this for me to some extent and I’m working to find a way to level out this experience, finding more enjoyment throughout the week, rather than looking at the weekend as the respository of fun for the entire week. My current thought is that extending my morning routine, including writing, past Wednesday and into Thursday and Friday may be a step in this direction.