Every day

Today is the last day of my second month writing publicly every day. The benefits have exceeded my expectations. The best surprise so far is having friends and family join along, putting up posts. It’s been heartening getting to hear about their lives in a new format.

The only other thing I’ve managed to do every single day for any significant length of time is to not get high or drunk. You might say, “that’s not something you do, that’s just not doing something.” You’d sort of be right about that, except for someone with an allergy like mine, it often takes conscious effort, one day at a time.

To help string those sober days together, I took on some everyday pledges. At age 27, thanks to good direction, I began making my bed for the first time in my life. I also started getting on my knees and asking for help each morning and giving thanks at night. It wouldn’t be possible to tell you the longest rally I’ve maintained those suggestions, fortunately I haven’t been spared some incredible benefits despite their simplicity. Two separate times in my first year of of this different way of living, I went to meetings every single day — 30 in a row right away, and then 90 in a row later when life started taking off and I began to get squirrelly.

To say sobriety has been the most positive decision I’ve ever made would be an understatement. So you can imagine my delight to share that so far this blogging adventure has already earned a spot as my second-most beneficial regular activity. Some of the the ways it has begun to improve my day-to-day and general thinking have come more quickly than putting a cork on it, probably because I have a solid foundation to build on.

Aaaand similarly, this writing deal is about progress, not perfection. It’s about doing the thing, day after day, even when I’m not at the top of my game. For instance, sometimes (like now maybe) I feel like I had a great topic, something meaningful to share. Then, I wrestle with the keyboard and distractions for over an hour and hate the words in front of me. In that case, I polish it up as much as possible, hit publish, and wait for another day to try again.