Streaks, Attempts, and Things Not to Publish

Woke up this morning set to do a Mountain Goat training run. Jumped up, dressed, drove down to where we all meet and was set to run. The guy who gives announcements announced..."we're not running today. Too much ice on the roads, too treacherous."

I thought, "Damn. Damn. Damn."

I was upset for a moment as I walked to my car. But then I smiled as if someone had played a prank on me. I drove home listening to music, wondering what to do with the rest of my day.

At home thinking about breakfast, I realized that I had broken my 750words streak yesterday. I had built quite a streak (146 days!) and was feeling great about it. The habit of writing every day had taken hold. Last time I lost a streak (just over 100 days) and was torn up. I beat myself up about it for a couple days, feeling as if I had let someone down.

It was all pretty ridiculous and no fun at all.

Today, I saw what I had done (or forgotten to do) and called upstairs to my wife. "Hey, you know what I forgot to do yesterday?" She started to say comforting things, but I cut her off. "No worries."

I've said those words many times, often to deflect from the fact that I'm upset. It's much better to follow it as a directive.

No worries. Accept what has happened. Move forward through it. Live well.

I smiled up the stairs, told her, "no worries," and felt it.

Even as I choose not to worry, I'm not sure how I'm doing it, but I'm happy. It's a mystery that I enjoy going through.

Which brings me to the writing I did on the last day of my streak. I wrote on Thursday about education and how frustrated I am. It was a good angry post, the kind of thing that usually gets me a bunch of page views, comments, and other reactions. I was all set to publish it but stopped for some reason.

That piece of writing didn't feel good.

I've long been frustrated about schools. It's good to be a little angry, but the post I had written was into the realm of rage and fury. The difference is everything.

Anger is useful. It pushes me forward and do something about whatever is frustrating me. But when I go over into rage or fury, I lose myself. Thursday's writing wasn't me. It was fury. There was no good reason to post it and every good reason not to post it.

I'm still glad that I wrote it. Writing is a way through rage and fury. I'm gladd too that I didn't post it. Rage and fury tend to become comedy. They make a fool of me.

It's not surprising that I didn't write yesterday. I was smarting from Thursday's rage on the page (unfortunate rhyme but one hell of a blog title). There were also a few basketball games to watch. It's no surprise either that it was easy to handle the disappointment of not running and breaking a writing streak. I'd already used up my rage and fury and so had no worries left.

One more good reason to write on.