A Day Still Has Only 24 Hours
My excuse for missing day 11. #MayIWrite — Day 12
I have a love-hate relationship with goal-setting, particularly when it comes to doing so publicly. Some research suggests that telling people about your goals can actually lessen the likelihood that you’ll complete them. Then again, a level of accountability can benefit people to push through when their intrinsic motivation may be low. Setting out to write every day for the month is both exciting and intimidating. I know what my life can look like. This is why I’ve given myself the wide berth of any kind of writing, from essays to haiku, falling within the scope of this goal. Yesterday I didn’t post anything.
I feel sheepish about it because I’m very sensitive to my own compass of success or failure. Here’s what’s good though: It’s an opportunity for me to push through the desire to be hard on myself and just move on. Yesterday was also a good reminder of the difference between feeling like there’s no time because time is being drained by things that aren’t as important as the things we hope to find time for, and having no time because every moment of your day from 6:30am to 2am is legitimately full. Legitimately full is a rarity but it happens. That was day 11.
It can be so tempting to get attached to black and white ideas. Either I make direct posts every day in May and succeed at my challenge, or I don’t and I fail. I can hardly take myself seriously if I refer to missing one day of my self-imposed challenge as adversity, but as a harmless example of a greater truth I would say that overcoming this bizarre internal sense of failure and picking up where I left off is really useful. The suggestion that adversity can always be overcome by the force of will, positive thinking, pulling up by your bootstraps etc. is harmful and untrue. There are still instances in our lives though where we really can avoid being our own worst enemy by deciding to “get over it”.
Yesterday was a long and intensely busy day. I did two full-time jobs worth of work, some very active parenting, and invested in meaningful and much-needed quality time with someone special to me. Day 11 is getting filed as evidence of my imperfect humanity. Now, back to it.
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