Resolution Versus Reality

I made a grandiose new year's resolution to write in this space every day for the month of January. When I set this intention it didn't feel out of the realm of possibility. Depending on the length and subject matter,  these posts take only a couple hours of my time.  There's few days that go by that I don't waste as least as much time as it takes to scribble down some thoughts and keep practicing my writing. I got home from working a ten hour shift at the restaurant on Saturday and stayed up late writing so I wouldn't miss a day. Yesterday, I wrote but didn't publish...I wasn't finished yet.  Another part of my resolution was to not write about writing--consider that one scratched too.

It is far too easy for me to run out of time, to have a range of excuses not to write. These excuses are as frustratingly legitimate as they are not. I'm sleep deprived. The rib injury I wrote about a few weeks ago is back in force. I've been working non-stop for the holidays and my muscles are sore and my spirit is drained. My room is a mess. I have a date tonight I don't want to cancel, I have to babysit in an hour and I'm writing this in the lobby of the Y where I am trying to sneak in a quick sauna session so I can take a few deep breaths and have ten minutes to myself. In short, life pulls constantly. In short, I want a lot more than ten minutes to myself.

I tried to enter this resolution with a spirit of openness, to see it as an exercise, not a bound-in-iron mandate. But my psyche apparently loathes a half-measure and has a seriously wack perspective on what I am truly capable of and under which conditions. I should know after twenty-seven years that I have never been able to change or implement a habit by sheer force of will and there is almost no activity I can successfully replicate day after day after day. Science tells us that almost no one can, but this is not satisfying to the part of me that has this belief that if I just fucking tried harder I could force myself to write every day for the rest of my life, forget about the thirty days--that if I cared enough, focused enough, sacrificed enough I would be able to live up to some heretofore untapped work ethic and creative potential. I know in theory that entering into a project with such a spirit should preclude the harshness with which I've been re-reading my efforts so far (and frankly, cringing) but I don't know what else to do but keep trying.

And there is the voice in my head that says that none of this fucking matters--hissing sweetly about all the times in my life that I have set myself a goal and failed (please see: every last one) and all the ways in which ultimately, the only person who cares about this is me. When this voice acknowledges that other people exist at all, its to remind me that they probably are also thinking that I'm a scattered, lazy sack-of-shit who's never accomplished much of anything.

I know it's ridiculous to expect perfect, tidy prose to appear under these conditions. Of course I might need more than a few hours. Of course I might need to sacrifice some dates, breathe through the pain, sleep a little smarter, not put as much pressure on each post. And of course none of this is helped by lambasting myself, as I have been doing roundly all morning, for not just being a better person. But without this resolution, I won't write as much. I know that as surely as I know that without a job to go to most days of the week, I get depressed and slothful. But as so often happens when I put external controls on my behavior, another part of my spirit rebels. A healthy challenge quickly becomes an albatross. The call is coming from inside the house.