Day 365

Doing anything for an entire year is difficult. I know because I have tried to start a lot of habits and have stuck with close to none of them. It takes a certain amount of time for a habit to become a routine, and I hope that I have made this into one. However this is where routines sometimes fall apart. The gateways of accomplishment.

The thing about a routine is there is no reward for it. There is, but there isn’t. You don’t celebrate milestones for brushing your teeth or for getting the morning coffee or for remembering to take your vitamins. They all lead to positive outcomes but there is no milestone for ten years of brushing your teeth.

It is still important to celebrate accomplishments. Writing for ten minutes every day for an entire year is something. If we consider that I make it somewhere between 400-600 words every day and that the average page in a book has 250 words on it then I could have written lots of pages by this time if I had directed the writing in that direction.

Instead it is a journal. A journal that doesn’t really tell a cohesive story. It has some threads, but I don’t know what carries through and what doesn’t. I have talked about a lot in here and probably a few things that have annoyed people. Some of the issues I have used this space to work through probably seem stupid or spoiled to most. Like wondering how I am going to use the money from the sale of my family business to better or position in local real estate and increase our cash flow without damaging equity. That would anger me a bit if those were someone’s “struggles.”

From the outside looking in I likely look like someone sitting in a privileged position and wasting it. I don’t struggle with real things like food insecurity or not having a home or being in an abusive relationship or addiction or a myriad of other real struggles. I struggle with balancing a life of trying to manage my father’s legacy through my families finances while running my own business and having three kids I often feel guilty about not spending enough time with. Compared to the more serious issues people face every day those seem silly.

But I made it a year putting this silly nonsense on the internet for a dozen people to read, and I thank you for that.