I Really Don’t Want to Write this Post

Gah.

I just got done with a long-ish day and have an even longer day tomorrow (2 job interviews and a date!). It’s 9pm. The last thing I want to do right now is to be writing this post.

So why am I doing it?

Well, basically, to break my pattern of making excuses for not doing things. One of the common threads in all of my failed 30 day challenges is that I make situational excuses. It’s late! I’m tired! I don’t have any focus left! My roommates are all hanging out and that seems like way more fun! I’ll take these excuses and build them up to the point that I actually believe they’re real reasons not to follow through with something I’ve committed to. It’s a bad place to be and a place I find myself at far too often.

The whole point of this blog is to break behavioral patterns like this to make myself stronger. If I let myself off the hook whenever was convenient, what would be challenging about that? Nothing. What would I end up improving? Nothing.

I’m currently about 2 weeks into a “Blog Post Per Day” 30 day challenge and I’m not going to let myself off the hook. This blog is one of the things I’m most excited about in the world right now. I think it’s a great opportunity to improve myself and to help others find ways to do the same. I also think that writing a post per day is the only way that I’m going to make any real headway.

To tell you all the honest truth, I only wrote 2 blog posts last week. The week just sort of got away from me. Monday? I was tired from a long weekend away and had a job interview! July 4th? Oh, it’s a holiday for goodness sake! Friday? I’m leaving for a weekend trip in the afternoon. Saturday? I’m away. Sunday? I’m getting back and I’m tired. Before you know it, I’ve missed 5 days of blog posting and gotten completely off track in my challenge.

But I’m back at it. I’m taking a fairly lax approach to my 30 day challenges currently and it’s making all the difference. When I miss a day, I just add it to the end of the challenge. So 30 blog posts may take 40 days, but that’s okay! Just knowing that I have a calendar with dates to X off is enough to keep me going even when I slip up.

However, I have to be vigilant about this approach because it can quickly devolve into utter failure. For instance, my intermittent fasting challenge got completely left by the wayside because I kept granting myself more and more passes. Eventually I had no consistency and had to stop. I couldn’t fast 3 days a week and then try and post about “results” on my blog. There wouldn’t be real results! And I’m not about to write a blog post titled “What Happens When You Halfheartedly Intermittent Fast 3 Days Per Week” because nobody wants to read that shit.

So here I am. This is my 3rd blog post this week and 3rd day in a row of writing. I did it. And I’ve got real momentum going into tomorrow and then the weekend. I made myself sit down and write this and I feel SO MUCH BETTER than if I had just fucked off and watched Netflix in bed.

If you’re thinking about skipping something you are working on or giving up entirely, I urge you to use everything you’ve got left in the tank to just do it. You’ll be glad you did. You don’t even have to do the best job! This blog post isn’t something I would publish on Medium or something I would share with friends but it’s something that helped me and hopefully can help somebody down the line.

Thanks for reading and here’s to not breaking the chain!