Second only to the motivation/self-discipline it takes to make this a daily habit, finding the time is probably the most difficult part about this whole process. It's such an interruption of the daily activities. I won't be excused for being late to work and I'm not going to ask people if they can reschedule things because I need to update my 'blog. In fact, if you're looking for a quick and easy way to lose friends and/or a job, just let everybody know they rank somewhere on your scale of "Important Things In Life" just below your 'blog.
It's so hard to start something new, especially if you weren't raised to be the most super-proactive person on the planet. Part of me wishes I could lay down in bed one night and just melt into a puddle that evaporates slowly and is never expected to reform. Another part of me wishes I could wake up one morning with this overwhelming sense of purpose and priorities that just kick into gear all of a sudden and take over everything. But that's not really how it works.
Probably the biggest lesson I learned in college was the need to show up for the beating. Allow me to explain. When I was a freshman (which was a long time ago), I thought that everybody else was just brimming with excitement to be in college and going to class and studying and writing papers and that I was somehow broken or defective because I didn't feel the same way. In fact, that sentiment was what eventually drove me to drop out. I thought that, in order to finish, you had to be possessed of this overwhelming joy at the prospect of becoming a responsible adult who woke up before 8 AM and drank coffee and got things done. Knowing that I lacked it, I sort of just wandered off, hoping to find it somewhere in the rank-and-file of "the real world." I figured (for whatever reason) that getting a job and paying rent and having to figure out how to make it on my own would teach me how to grow up and love being responsible.
But over time, I realized that I hated it. I didn't want to become an adult and I hated having to take care of all of these stupid things like bills and groceries and making sure that stuff got paid on time. I really wanted to just be left alone so I could drink and play video games or... well, that was pretty much it. I never wanted to do much more than that. I assumed that if I waited around long enough, all that other stuff would just fall into place without me having to work at it. I figured it wouldn't be too much longer, that I'd get around to it next week or next month or at least before my next birthday.
Then one day I woke up and realized that it had been four years.
I kinda started panicking, because out of everything you can waste, time is the only thing you can't get back or make more of. I started adding up all the money I had been flushing down the drain and seeing that the cost of maintaining my life was starting to outweigh the benefit of what I was producing with it. I felt worthless. Which only added to the overall lack of drive I was suffering from.
Once I started grounding my life in principles, though, that started to change. I started to think less in terms of what was ahead of or behind me and more in terms of what was right in front of me. I realized that where I wanted to be tomorrow was impacted by what I did with today. I started going through the process of re-enrolling, regardless of whatever doubts and insecurities I had (and trust me, there were plenty). Along the way, I began to realize that my ability to get things done wasn't dependent on how I felt that day, but whether or not I was willing to do the work involved in climbing whatever my next step was. By the end, after two and a half years of making those kinds of decisions, the work became something like a reflex: all I had to do was get out of bed in the morning and the rest of my day was pretty much set out in front of me.
Graduating, though, has kinda changed things. There's no registrar to tell me what my schedule is going to be and no teachers to give me my next assignments. There's no campus to go to where everything important happens. It's kinda just me and God and the whole rest of the world. If I choose to be productive, that's good. If I choose not to, there's nobody around to tell me I can't.
That's why I think that it's good for me to make 'blogging a part of my daily routine: precisely because I have to find time to do it. Which, I understand, is a weird thing to say. It's kinda like tithing or lifting weights - part of what you're developing is the simple discipline it takes to make it a priority in the first place. Yes, there are incredible benefits to tithing, working out and (I'm hoping) 'blogging. It's good to know that a portion of your finances are being used to help others in need, or that you're developing your body into something that isn't just a flabby chunk of Doritos® and marshmallow cream, and I don't want to down-play those aspects of it. But there's something to be said for the discipline it takes to even care about those things in the first place.
In the book of Ephesians, Paul talks about living wisely "because the days are evil." I used to think that he meant that like, today's society is evil or kids these days are evil, but I think he's actually talking about the nature of time itself. Like I said before, time is something that you never get back and you have to either reconcile what you've already lost and start making better decisions about what to do with the rest of it or just keep floundering around and adding to the things you already hate yourself for. And it's not really even something you can just decide one day and you're done forever. You have to keep coming back to the table and making a new choice about it every morning.
But, whatever... I can't sit around and muse about this all day.
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