I write three pages in longhand into my diary every morning.
Can you spot the problem with that sentence?
Of course I don’t write every morning. Sometimes I just forget it. Some mornings I can’t get out of my bed and zoom off to work in a way that would make the White Rabbit die of envy. On other days it’s just two pages, because I ran out of things to think about1.
But still, I tend to ignore those cases and just say “I write three pages in long hand into my diary every morning.”
Why?
Well, I found that if I’m completly honest and say “I write them most of the time”, I soon have to downgrade to “I write sometimes” and eventually to “I’d like to, but I never do it”. But by saying “always” I make commitment – and it means I’ll actually do it most of the time. I’m not a liar but a usually honest human, who’s just a teensy little bit in denial. Sometimes.
And my morning pages get written and rarely lack an entry.
Getting in my art and writing time actually works similiar. “I draw an hour every day!” works much better than “I draw an hour most of the days” in the “actually getting drawings done” department. Denial for the win!
Who knows, maybe that works for you, too? Maybe it would be worth a try.
Footnotes:
- Unfortionally my inner dialogues are usually noisy. It gets especially annoying when my Muse starts to argue with my Inner Child, who is usually backed up by my Innerer Schweinehund, the part of me that always wants to procastinate and laze around. I wish they’d sell earplugs for my inner ears. ↩
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