Well, this is embarrassing. After three months of (almost) daily writing, I really dropped the ball. In fact, in May, I wrote exactly zero days of the month.
So what on Earth happened?
It's tough to say, honestly. Part of it was that I had some pressing projects at work to deal with that ate up a lot of time. And then later on in the month, I took on even more responsibilities at work, so I had to spend time getting acquainted with my new role. And my wife and I are expecting a baby here soon, and we've been doing various things around the house to prepare for that. All of that takes up time and mental energy.
But the real reason is that I allowed myself to get out of the habit. I missed one day and then another and then another and I didn't get back up on the horse when I should have. Instead, I let "not writing" become a habit.
But a fresh month is a fresh start. I'm committing to getting back on the writing wagon in June and going forward. I can't promise I won't miss a day. (New babies tend to take up a lot of time and energy.) But the expectation I'm setting for myself is that I will write every day, for at least five minutes per day. I probably won't jump back in and try to do an hour each day, which was what I was doing as recently as April 30th. Instead, I plan to set the goal for thirty minutes a day for the first week of June and work my way up in ten minute increments.
I've also done a few things to set myself up for success with this goal. The first is that I'm going to try and be less rigid with when I write. I tend to write best in the mornings, but too often I let that be a excuse. "Oh well," I'll think, "Didn't get my writing done and here it is late afternoon. Best just skip it for the day." Though I'd like to write first thing in the morning (or near to it), I'm going to try and be more flexible with my writing routine, overall. Another thing is that I've gone back to bullet journaling more seriously. Knowing what tasks I'm going to do and when I'm going to do them makes it easy to not get distracted. Also, I'm going to work up some sort of writing tracker for the bullet journal (I refuse to say "bujo") in order to keep my eyes on my progress.
So stay tuned for next month's update in which I will report that I wrote more in June than I did in May. Hell, I already have.
