5 am today was unholy
5 AM today was unholy. You know how it is. Eyes crusted shut, mouth grossly dry. Mind splinched between dream and reality, dismembered thoughts limping about. Then a simple choice, really. Do I go for a run like I’d planned? Or do I go back to sleep?
I bitched and moaned. Waxed and waned. Do I choose the hard thing or the easy one? Do I stay true to my word, or do I bail on myself? In my dreams I am beholden to no one, not even myself. Sometimes I crave that.
But I also crave growth (and am very neurotic). So I spent 8 frigid miles thinking about what it means to build a habit and why I am so obsessed with it.
It takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days (66 on average) to build a new habit. A cue or trigger must be identified, some routine established, some reward given, a feedback loop created. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It sounds formulaic, plug-and-chug.
But I see habit-building as something more. A boxing match between lizard brain and enlightenment. A marriage between the conscious and subconscious. Bridging what is and what could be, it is pregnant with promise. And like pregnancy, it is not pretty. There is no glamour in daily purging.
What catalyzes the birth of a new habit? The death of an old one? What sees one through? A good habit demands a pound of flesh. The patience of a woodsmith sanding oak, the focus of a pastry chef laminating. Clear-eyed discipline in spades. I want to distill the ingredients of habit-creation soup. Create it at will. Drink, drink, drink.
I yearn to know more and dread falling behind. I’m constantly trying to recreate myself, even though it’s not so cool to be so desperately eager, so baldly earnest.
I was 8 when I wrote my first story. It was handwritten, held together by a pink binder, plastic cover doodled over in chunky marker, Christi’s Notes. At recess, encircled by a cluster of friends, I sat atop a rubber-coated picnic table and read stories pulled straight from my imagination and JK Rowling’s. The power I held, the magic! I was intoxicated as a third grader could be.
At 10 I got my first laptop. An 11 inch Acer, slow as hell, loud as a hummer, perfect. I hid under the covers typing at night. Got caught. Migrated to the closet and buried myself under laundry to stifle the sound, paranoia intensifying the thrill. I wrote and wrote and wrote, tens of thousands of words, story after story. One grew to be almost 200 pages long. The laptop broke.
When asked about my dream job as a kid, I always said writer. I am 25 now, graduate of a “medium-sized liberal arts college” and a recovering consultant working at a fintech startup. I love my job. But I’m not a writer.
That hasn’t stopped me from writing shitty poems when I’m down, stashing words in a secret Google Drive full of essays, musings, fiction, nonfiction, the novel I tried and failed to write, my exploding journal. Last year, I challenged myself to write 1000 words a day. I averaged probably 600, which I’ll take.
This year my challenge is to share it.
I am self-conscious about many things, but few things more than my writing. Writing just 200 good words feels harder than climbing Camelback Mountain. And publishing them? That’s like having bad nudes leaked.
I know I have no chill. I can’t stand myself either. But I want to improve. To develop skill, question my beliefs, learn through writing. I want to connect through writing, to elucidate my inner world and invite a conversation with yours. I want to share writing worthy of public consumption. I want to build this habit free of judgement from myself. Posting weekly on this substack is how I plan to begin.
I am a yapper at heart and a romantic. I want to explore the depth with which humans can feel. The appeal of endurance sports for the perfectionist, the danger of it. Being nontechnical in a technical space. Why people love guessing birth order. Why every kid should do speech and debate. The revenge of introversion. Why everyone should cry in public, why dating apps are romantic, why people with the upper hand in situationships are morally obligated to abdicate their power. How we will know what to believe when AI finally takes over. The mental illness of having a crush. “Fuck it we ball” as a cultural artifact.
Today is day one of sharing what I’ve been storing in my pockets. Of seeking strong opinions to hold loosely.
Habit-building made me who I am today. I only hope it will make me who I want to become.