The Will Creates the Way

The last few posts of this daily blogging project have gotten harder to write each day. I am two posts off from meeting my goal, with this being one of those two.

Today's post has been hard because I had a bout of media-triggered insomnia that kept me up until 3:17, which meant that I got up late and didn't have time to write, and then at the end of the day, I didn't have the energy or bandwidth to write. I took a nap from 7:00--10:15pm so I could wake up refreshed enough to get this out the door.

While I was warming up, I happened to update a plugin on my website, but that update caused an error with my website's back end such that I then couldn't log in to write this post. Luckily, I knew the problem was related to that update, and I was able to contact Synthesis (my fantastic web host) and they had me up and running again in about 10 minutes.

So, here we are. I tell this story for context because I've also been wondering if it's my old "quit when you're so close to done" pattern at play at the same time that I've been dancing against the edge of self-care more than usual. When it comes to the sleeping-eating-exercising self-care triad, consistent sleep has always been the anchor for me, but that has definitely been off this month. The two big changes this month have been noticeably longer days (I stay up later and get up earlier) and this daily blogging project.

I know myself well enough to know that my wind-down time after writing is a few hours; I'm not one of those people who can quickly down-cycle after I've been focusing on something, so there's no doubt in my mind that this project has altered my sleep cycles. I've taken a "let's see what happens" approach, so I've gone with it because it's been more important to really see what happens rather than suspect what might happen. I also wanted to see what happens if I lean into it, for the juice might be worth the squeeze.

Tonight thus presented a superficial conflict between self-care and goal accomplishment. The obvious third option was to take a nap and get up and get it done, but honestly, were it not for my commitment to write daily, I would not have pursued that third option. I would've just gone to bed. (Again, the power of public commitment.)

The whole website problem presented another easy opportunity to check out. I could have whined about my website being down and woken up tomorrow and figured it out. Instead, I was able to quickly determine the likely cause, even if I didn't know how to fix it, and reach out to my web host to get it fixed.

The lesson, reaffirmed, that "where there is a will, there is a way" is not quite right. The will creates the way.

When it comes down to it, this whole project hasn't been about blogging per se, but about rejecting old stories and writing new ones. Blogging has just been the vehicle. Nothing more ever needs to come from it than seeing that the old story about me quitting when I'm almost done is something that I can either reject outright or prove to be wrong. I am resilient, tenacious, and adaptable when I choose to be, and wise enough to know what needs to be finished and what doesn't.

And so are you.