Habits are important. I want to have them.

I don’t know if I’m stubborn or hopeful, but I’ve been trying to develop good, impressive, productive habits for nearly my whole pseudo-adult life. I swear I’m going to read more regularly. I swear I’m going to sew or craft every night. I swear I’m going to write a journal entry, an editorial, a chapter of fiction, a poem, something on this damn blog, every day. I swear I’ll catch up on that television show. I swear I’ll read as many comic as I like to think I do. I swear I’ll take better care of my too-old-to-be-this-pimply face. Etcetera, ad nauseum, every day.

The fact that I’ve recently started washing my dishes every night and bringing my lunch to work (almost) daily is frankly mind boggling. I’m not sure how I’ve done it. I’m not really sure what went differently this time, other than that once I did it a few times I realized it felt good and made my life easier. It’s not any kind of method that I can apply to other areas of my life. For example, I could say, for probably the 10th time on this blog, that STARTING RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND I’ll be posting something here EVERY DAY WITHOUT FAIL because it’s something that I need to do AS A WRITER and FOR MY CAREER but that would probably just wind up sabotaging me. Maybe the key is to not freak myself out about it. Maybe I just need to forget about whoever it was that told me ‘you’re only a writer if you write all the time’. Or maybe I need to remember that advice with more biting, stinging clarity.

I’m 23 and I still haven’t figured out how to make myself do things. That’s probably sad as hell. It certainly feels pathetic. It’s the kind of thing that can and does bring me to tears over the crushing burden of my own uselessness. But, I guess, the point of this whole thing (growing up, moving out, living a life) is trying a thing over and over until the thing happens in a way you can’t completely explain. Like washing the dishes.

So, what the hell, I’ll say it. I’LL WRITE EVERY DAY. Even if it’s just a few hundred words of mindless crap. I’ll do it.

This has been Day 1.