I built my writing altar, as I showed you previously when I talked about this practice. It's quite nice, in my opinion. When I sit down to write, I light the candle, and more than once I've written until the tealight went out. I can't manage that every night, however. Some nights are like last night, when everything catches up to me at 11:30 and I realize I haven't written anything.
Daily practice is a challenging habit to form, whether that practice is devotional or skillful. I've often attempted to maintain a daily writing practice before, sometimes with more success than others. It varies, though, and tends to end with the same problem no matter how I set out to track it - I get so caught up in the idea of not failing that whether or not I'm getting the intended benefit becomes secondary. Both HabitRPG and SuperBetter resulted in trying to figure out how to "cheat" - as if there's any benefit to actually winning.
I'm attacking my inadequacies with both hands this year, though, and that includes shaking up systems I previously thought I was satisfied with. I'm playing with new to-do list options. I'm experimenting with different financial tools and trying to finally switch over to a credit union. I'm surprisingly enjoying my paper planner even if I'm sometimes frustrated with finding the "perfect" one.
And I'm writing. Every night I sit for an hour, butt in chair. It's a lot harder than I expected. Almost every night I catch myself thinking, well, maybe I can just write on the couch tonight. It's just as good, right?
That is a lie. It is not just as good. It is not half as good, and I don't get half as much done when I sit there. But it's slouchy and I can see the TV and it's tempting. Which is all the more reason to get Butt In Chair, really. I know that this is something I'm capable of, and something that is important to me.
All I have to do is do the thing. And then do it again. And keep doing it.
Should be totally do-able, right?