You have to sing tonight’s title in the tune of Conan O’Brien’s “In The Year Two Thousaaaaand.”
On the one hand, it’s kinda hard to believe that I’ve written this blog now for a thousand days in a row…and on the other hand, it’s not surprising to me at all. And I suppose that leads me to what I’ve been thinking a lot about today, which is the power of ritual. Or routine, or habit, or whatever you want to call it…writing this blog is second nature to me. Ps- what IS “second nature,” really? What is this differentiation from our, I guess, first nature? Is this a first is the worst, second is the best, third is the tweetie bird type of thing?
Anyway, back to natures and whatnot…I don’t even think about needing to write a blog entry at the end of my day any more. It’s a given. It’s part of my nighttime ritual, and I don’t feel complete without doing it. So, the thousand days is truly mind-blowing, you guys, but it also pales in comparison to THAT. It makes me happy and content to write my blog. I’ve turned something that started out as a challenge to just be able to say that I’d written *something* every day for 90 days, something I was making myself do in order to prove to myself that I COULD do it…and it’s become something that is just a part of me and my day. The counting of the days, after the first couple weeks or so, was never the point. The point was to give myself an outlet, a “digital shelf” as I called it, where I could throw up anything and everything that was a part of me and keep it so I could go back and find it if I ever needed to, and to share it with anyone who was interested in looking.
I cannot express to you how much this blog has come to mean to me. It is me. I really do put myself, raw, unedited and unfiltered, into this blog. Which is honestly probably why it’s usually not worth reading 😛 because all the mundane-ness of the day-to-day, and the monotony of trains of thought that we all find ourselves in so often make up the vast majority of the daily entries I write. For me it’s usually about work. This blog has really taught me how much I think about work. But…I write those thoughts each night because they are the actual thoughts floating through my head. I try to keep it a hunnit.
So, that’s the first lesson I’ve learned from writing every day for 1,000 days…if there is something you want to do that’s hard, that doesn’t immediately pay you back or makes you confront your own vulnerability and insecurities, but it’s something that you really love: DO IT EVERY DAY. Seriously. That’s the magic trick. Every day. No matter what is going on, squirrel away 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15, whatever…because once you start doing this thing that’s hard, but you love, every single day…it will become second nature to you. You won’t be complete without it, and it will be a part of you, and you WILL accomplish whatever it is you thought was impossible once upon a time. [and tomorrow, we can talk about being kind to yourself, and how a “consecutive streak” really means nothing and failure and “off” days are part of life]
As I think back on where I was and who I was almost three years ago, I think about what has changed and how this daily blog has made me different…and I think the first thing that comes to mind and why I would recommend to anyone and everyone to keep some sort of daily journal…is that I have this history of the mental state that I can go back and reference and look at. I cannot overstate how incredible that is. It’s like this fucking mirror that you get to use and really see yourself and your patterns. The insight and objectivity that it can bring to one’s self, at least me to myself, is crazy pants. I’ve realized how much I obsess about work, about how I go through minor bouts of depression once every month or so, about how I say “yes” to too many things, and about how I set myself up to work in these big bursts of energy that wipe myself out and I get sick or too tired to start again for a few weeks or months…and how much that has held back my productivity.
The second epiphany this blog has taught me, about a year ago, is that happiness only exists in the present. I know, I know…that’s almost a cliche, but fuck it. I never actually understood what those philosophical types were on about…but I do now. It’s pretty simple: If I am waiting for happiness to come with some accomplishment, or from some future that I’m sacrificing my present time for…I will never be happy. It will always be just on the horizon, me chasing it wide-eyed and sweat-stained…so focused on that shimmering mirage of what I *thought* happiness was, that I’m unable to see that happiness is all around me and I just need to slow down a bit, make a couple tweaks here and there in my day-to-day routine, and suddenly, I’m happy. Right now. Not tomorrow, not once upon a time…RIGHT. FUCKING. NOW. If there’s another kind of better version of you that you want to be someday, don’t wait to be that person some day…be that person right now. Figure out how you can get even just a piece of that person today. Because THAT is the key to change. If you can grab even the tiniest piece of that change right at this very moment, and then keep holding onto that piece, step by step, you’ll become the change you wanted so much.
I don’t particularly feel like that was well written…but fuck it, right? This is raw and unedited folks. For realsies. Hopefully some of it all makes sense.
So…where was I 1,000 days ago? I was nervous, feeling a bit overwhelmed at having gone through the gauntlet of realizing I didn’t want to focus on acting any more, I had a job that I just couldn’t seem to get myself to DO day in and day out, and this nagging feeling that I really felt like I wanted to write. But I didn’t know where to start. It’s almost three years later now, and I still feel overwhelmed at times…but I’ve written a pilot, a short story, a novel, mastered that job I literally couldn’t do, work that AND another job now, and I’ve written 1,000 blog posts. The “results” are physical and real.
So what do I feel looking back at all that, and looking at where I am write now as I sit in bed writing this meandering crazy entry? I feel grateful. Overwhelmingly so. I feel grateful for my family, my brothers and my parents, I feel grateful for my chosen family, my wife and Cooper and Coco, and for my friends. Literally none of what I do is possible without those people. I said it once in my first yearly retrospective, the one for 2013 which I’d dreaded writing because I was so ashamed with what I felt was a lost year…until I sat down and actually started writing out everything that I had done, and realized it had been an *amazing* year…I just couldn’t see it…
…and I said that I am not myself, I am all of those people closest to me. I am all the people who have helped me and loved me. I am nothing without them and everything with them. And realizing that fills me up to the top. I overflow with gratitude for those people.
So, thank you. From the bottom of my heart.
And here’s to 1,000 more! There’s so much left to say and do…this is only the beginning.
Tonight’s artwork is the very first piece of SciFi art I ever published on this blog, my literal “Hello World” entry. Unattributed, unfortunately. But awesome.