I have been writing every single day for seventeen hundred days. 1700 days is approximately 4.66 years or 4 years and 7ish months. Not bad right?
This is quite a bit longer than I anticipated when I first began writing daily with the relatively modest ambition to write once a day for a month.
I had done daily journaling in private for ten days and was interested in seeing if I could write in public every day for some period.
I wanted to create to synthesize what I consumed across the media landscape as I tried to make sense of a world deep in the throes of Covid.
This experiment was my second sustained blogging project as I had kept a WordPress blog in the glory years of 2005-2008 or so. Other social media was easier but I’d always liked the format of public long form writing.
I had a secret silent ambition to take the daily habit to one year. It seemed doable. I fantasized about making it to 1000 days, even from the start, but that seemed bigger and more likely to fail. But if Scheherazade could make it to One Thousand and One Nights maybe I could as well?
I set out with realistic expectations but big ambitions. And now here on a random August Wednesday I am deep into the depths of a daily habit that shows no sign of stopping.
I nurtured my early ambition by saying I’d take it one day at a time, while never pressuring myself into achieving it. A journey of a thousand miles (or in my case days) starts with a single step.
I don’t care for pressure. I never have. I believe those who are truly ambitious about themselves set their own standards. You make your own life.
I will do things in my own time and at my own pace. I have never been a quitter so it’s never been a problem that I go at my own pace. Life is about results not effort.
My tenacity remains a force in my life because I am comfortable tending to my will daily. We only make progress by nurturing the seed of a thing.
Not every day is a good day. We don’t always win. I have many days where I lose. But as Allen Iverson said “it’s practice” and you never miss practice. And practice adds up. I’ve done amazing things in the last almost half decade.
I hope that this aspect of my character is as clear to others as it is to me. If I sent out on a journey I will do what I can to make it. If I fail (and I might) it is because I couldn’t.
Maybe the timing isn’t always right or my mind or body isn’t right or the market isn’t right or I am not right. Full stop. But I’ll never let myself fail because I didn’t make an honest effort. And you make the effort every single day.