Toe in the Water

Never Kick the Habit

Never Kick the Habit

It is a dangerous thing to be kind to yourself. Forget all those self help books that say you have to start by loving yourself; be cruel and unforgiving, demand higher standards, never allow yourself to get away with anything. If you relax on anything, be certain that yourself will take advantage of it.

How do I know this? Well, despite the fact that experience has taught it to me countless times over the years, yesterday and today I had to learn it all over again. Sometimes I despair of myself.

It happened like this. Months ago, I established a blogging pattern of one post every two days; it's ideal for me, not too strenuous (which leads to creative exhaustion) and not too infrequent to keep the readers happy. And I've kept to that schedule, even on days when I haven't felt like writing. Good discipline, I tell myself; someone has to keep your nose to the grindstone or (I know you) you'll be off somewhere playing a game or thinking about nothing.

Yesterday was a blogging day. As usual, I turned up for work bleary-eyed and moaning that I really didn't feel like writing today, I need time to think, all these projects are too big for me, have a heart. Nothing out of the ordinary. So I paid no attention and set myself to work. I even fired up Notespad and saved an empty page as Blog160.txt. And then sat and stared at the page.

"I can't do this," I thought. "I really don't think I can do this."

It was then that I made my mistake. I relented. Take a day off, I thought, nobody will notice; and you always said that you'd take a break if you feel like it. Go on, it's not the end of the world.

So I did and, sure enough, no one noticed. Except me, of course. I should have known that I'd make myself pay for such a decision. Come this morning and the brain has a big sign up on the gate: Sorry, no work today. All employees at Crisis of Confidence Meeting.

"Oh great," I thought, "that's all I need. Now what am I going to do?" I sent some desperate pleas for help up to the meeting but received only a few complaints in reply. Nope, we're not up to it today; everything you think of is too difficult; why can't you invent some easy posts for a change?, that kind of thing.

It's the breaking of habit, you see. We don't generally recognize it, but habit is an enormous help to us in getting through our days. It saves on motivational energy and does a lot of thinking for us. Habit is probably the most important ingredient in ensuring that we keep ticking on through the days, doing the necessary, producing the goods. And I'd blown it with that one instance of giving in to myself. Now I just wanted to slob around the house, certain that writing was completely out of the question and telling myself that I'd get back to it tomorrow.

That word "tomorrow" is the beginning of the slippery slope, of course. It was "tomorrow" that got me into this mess in the first place. It's "tomorrow" today and I feel worse than I did yesterday. Desperately, I phoned the meeting again.

"Please," I said, "you've gotta help me, I'm in deep trouble here. If I don't post something today, they'll start to drift away and then we'll all be out of a job."

Well, they argued and complained but I kept at them and, eventually, they sent down Albert and Ben, the cleaners, to give me a hand. We sat down together and tackled the problem. All morning we thrashed various ideas around but we knew they were going to be too big for us without the brain to help. Things were looking grim but then Ben looks up with a mischievous grin on his face.

"What about a nothing post?" he said.

I stared at him. He had a point; it's been a while since I did the last nothing post. But even a nothing post has to be about something.

"A nothing post about what?" I asked.

"Simple, boss," he says. "Just write about having nothing to write about. That's what a nothing post is, after all."

"Yeah," says Albert.

"But I do have things to write about. They're just a bit too big for me at the moment."

Ben shrugged. "So, what yer gonna do, write nothing today again? You need to get the habit back."

"Yeah," says Albert.

Ben was right, of course. I had to produce something or things could only get worse. Write about nothing.

"Okay," I said, "we'll do it. But one thing, how about us doing an extra one tomorrow so that we're back on track?"

"Hah," said Ben, "have to ask the brain about that one."

"Yeah," says Albert.

"And another thing, boss. Why don't you get these posts done the day before so that there's none of this panic all the time?"

"Good idea," said I.

Fat chance, I thought.


Word count: 860