I Failed

To my readers, I owe you a sincere apology. I'm sorry. I failed you.

All four of you. My blog clearly states that there will be a new post every Sunday. And last night, which was Sunday, I lay in bed about to fall asleep when it hit me - fuck! I didn't post a blog article today.

Did I immediately hop out of bed and go to my computer so I could sit down and bang something out in order to keep my schedule? No. And I'll tell you why.

I did it because I knew whatever I wrote with my tired, worn-out-from-the-day brain would be bad. I didn't have any ideas for what to write, or at least none that would take less than two solid hours of sustained focus. And I simply didn't have two solid hours of sustained focus left in the tank that day.

So I decided to take the proverbial "L". I missed a Sunday. And I'm not going to sugar-coat it with some platitude like and that's okay! Because while I recognize that the stakes couldn't possibly be any lower (I don't even think my parents check the blog until Thursday or Friday most of the time) I really don't think it's okay. And that's because it's taken me 31 years to fully appreciate the importance of the little agreements we make with ourselves.

The truth is the exact opposite if what you might expect. (Irony!) You make a little agreement with yourself, maybe it's to do 20 push-ups a day. Maybe it's to call a friend just to chat once a week. In my case it's to publish an article on my blog every Sunday. We make these choices because we know they represent baby-steps in the right direction, the direction that our hearts are constantly nudging us toward, to make the difference between our lives and our ideal lives that much smaller.

But nobody's watching. Nobody's going to slap you on the wrist or fine you $20 if you fall short. (Unless you've set up such a system with a friend, which is not a bad idea at all.) And since nobody's life will be ruined if you don't do your 20 pushups or if I don't stick to my publishing schedule, it's no big deal, right?

Wrong!!

I used to think that the small decisions didn't matter as long as you got the big ones right. Who you marry, what kind of career you pursue, that kind of thing. Those are big, discrete decisions. But life is made up of so many more big decisions that are disguised as tiny decisions, repeated a million times. The decision to take care of your body. The decision not to let your relationships wither and die. The decision to build something, to create something you really like and actually think is good, to do more than just breathe and eat and exist.

The decision not to survive, but to live, isn't something you make all at once. It's something that comes down to the little things we choose to do or not do; it's a hundred tiny forks in the road every single day. Those little things you set out to do for yourself, the ones where nobody's watching, the ones that don't matter - I think they matter more than we can possibly imagine. And we'll fall off and fuck up, of course we will. It's okay, as long we don't give up whatever it is, and get back to it as soon as we can. Do 30 push ups the next day. Call two friends the next week.

Publish on a Monday.