Failure

I've been trying to write something every day, but last night I was out late and fell asleep as soon as I got home. My first instinct is to make up for it by just posting twice today, but the problem with that is that it lessens the instructive value of having failed. I think it's important to be reminded occasionally that success isn't something you achieve once, it's a process that requires constant maintenance. Suceeding at writing every day, then, is something that can go away fairly quickly.

But I do gain a lot of value from feeling like I am trying to keep up a particular pattern, and it feels good to have a long chain of daily posts stretching back. The most important thing is that the habit has significance, and that it's something I take seriously. Eventually I arrived at the compromise decision of posting twice, but making one of those posts about the failure itself.

I think the strategy that would have prevented this is writing before I left home, or alternatively being prepared with something I could write quickly as soon as I got home regardless of how late that was. Doing those things obviously won't help this failure, but it should make one less likely next time.

And in the end that's the best you can ask for.