A Practice Blog

 Tomorrow Is a New Day

It’s almost July 4 and I haven’t written about freedom in days. I was so diligent and then I fell off and I don’t know why. I could easily come up with all kinds of excuses…being busy, celebrating my birthday, being tired, being scared. They’re all true, but the last reason especially. I am sure I have nothing to say. I am reading a lot and that’s good. I'm also writing in my personal journal, but I haven’t written anything for this book in five days! I’m writing a book about freedom, but without self-discipline there is no freedom and there will be no book. This is a hard truth.

In my head, I write every day. Every day. Without fail. I’d even be happy with five days a week with weekends off, as if this were an actual paying job. But I can’t afford to take five days off from writing this book. The other day someone told me that my inability to sleep without medication (which started during the pandemic) is because I need to get out of my place and to the same place every day - a coffee shop or a library, perhaps - and work there. That might not also help me with my sleep issues, but maybe, just maybe, being in a different place, a place I have to walk to, a place that is quiet, might give me the structure I need in order to write on a consistent basis. Although tomorrow is July 4, I could still get up early, go to the gym, come home, have breakfast and shower, and then go to a coffee shop and work. I’d rather go to the library, but it will be closed for the holiday. Tonight, after writing here, I could pack my lunch and book bag in preparation for the morning.

“Tomorrow is a new day.” That can be an excuse for not doing work today or it can be a beacon of hope. Tomorrow will be a new day and every new day is a new chance. 

Steven Pressfield writes in The War of Art, “Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.”

Pressfield also says, “The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

I am scared of this project, but I’m more scared of not finishing. I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. I feel like I’m being presumptuous and foolish and that I’m wasting my time and that nobody likes me and nobody will read it and that I should be looking for a “real” job. But then I look at the state of the country and how it’s sliding into totalitarianism and I have a gift of writing and I have the time to read a book a week and I’m great at summarizing ideas and synthesizing them into my own and I don’t want my kids to live in Nazi America, so I have to do something even if it’s to write a book that nobody will read. I have to be able to say I at least tried.

Today someone told me that this country has been in this shape before and we will either bounce or go splat. I want to see our country bounce back into full freedom for everyone. Tomorrow does not seem like a new day for this country, but an older and much harsher day. I want to help make tomorrow a new day.