What happens when you post your 1,633rd consecutive daily post early, accidentally?
I sent “Doing and not doing” off to cyberspace with instructions to go online at 3 a.m. CST Sunday, Jan. 18. Bad news, w.p.: Sunday is Jan. 19, so I awoke to see “I’d love to change the world” still up front and today’s intended post sitting in second place.
Worse, my WordPress dashboard still congratulated me for my 1,632-day streak. Yes, this is a random post to convince the algorithms that I really have been doing this for 1,633 days.
Let that be a lesson to you, kids: Make sure all your settings are in the right place before you press “Schedule” or “Publish” or “Play” or “Record” or whatever it is you are setting your settings for.
Technology and humans are great companions, but sometimes we let each other down.
“We might not need better advice,” Seth Godin wrote the other day. “We might simply need to do the work of being able to work with the good advice we already have.”
Ain’t it the truth? Books upon books, videos upon videos, articles upon articles, have fed us a firm foundation about what we must do to reach what we want to reach. Instead of doing that work, we reach for another book, another video, or another article to reinforce the advice.
Even the advice to “Just do it!” — “Do or do not, there is no try” — we repeat to ourselves while chiding the guy in the mirror — “Why aren’t you you doing it yet?” “Why haven’t you done it yet?” — all the while knowing that we’re stalling, chiding instead of doing.
But oh, wait. I AM doing. I’m filling pages of my journal with words I will convert into blog posts, and eventually, the blog posts into books.
After years of chiding myself for not posting every day on my blog, I have been posting every day for nearly four and a half years. After starting journals and quitting after a few days, then finally taking four years to finish a journal, I am 72 pages into my 27th journal. After always wanting to write a book, I have 15 books on the market. After constantly proclaiming that I want to be a full-time writer when I grow up, I am about to complete my 50th year of collecting paychecks for writing full time.
This is a familiar pattern for me. I sit down to assess where I am, despair a bit over what is still undone, and then realize how much I have already done. It would be nice if the house was paid off, it would be nice if I could afford to go somewhere warm while my home is in a deep freeze, it would be nice if I sold more of my books — but I can make the monthly payments, I can afford to keep the furnace running, and people have 15 choices (and counting) if they do want to read one of my books.
Life is pretty darn good. At the end of the familiar pattern, I smile, stop beating myself, and keep moving forward.
What am I trying to say? What do I hope to accomplish? I am one of 7 (or is it 8) billion humans on this planet — how can little me make any difference at all? I can say or write nothing that someone else hasn’t said or written already. Who do I think I am?
But …
I can make life easier for this dog and that dog. I can spread some seed to feed a few dozen birds this morning. I can give a smile to that man or that woman. I can make a small difference to anyone I encounter today, and try to make it a positive difference.
I can’t change the world, but I can make theirs a little better. That’s a start.
