Show Up Anyways
I missed my daily post yesterday. It’s really easy for me to get caught up in disappointment and self-flagellation when I fall short of a goal I’ve set for myself. Part of the work I’ve been doing lately has been learning to be more gracious with myself when this happens.
In this case, I was dealing with an unexpected maintenance issue at my apartment that impacted the neighbor below me. I had to drop everything Thursday to focus on that before the holiday weekend. As if that wasn’t enough, I also transferred a couple domains to a new provider, which caused my website to stop loading entirely. I spent hours troubleshooting with AI assistance, walking through fixes until I got it working again.
So yes, I missed one day’s post. But despite still dealing with the maintenance issue (now on hold because of the holiday weekend), I at least resolved the website problem yesterday. And here I am, writing again today.
The old me would have used missing one day as permission to abandon the entire project. “Well, I already broke it, so what’s the point?” But that’s the perfectionist trap that keeps us stuck in cycles of starting and stopping.
Just because you miss a day in pursuing your goals doesn’t make it less important to show up the following day, as much as our brains might try to trick us into believing that. Accomplishing our goals isn’t about perfection; it’s about persistence despite imperfection.
The opportunity for real progress presents itself in every decision we make, not in the unbroken streak.