A Note to the Reader (Five Weeks In)

This is week five of me showing up here. Which feels both small and significant, given that the world is—once again—in unprecedented times. Though if I'm honest, I'm not sure when we haven't been.

I grew up with dial-up internet and landlines. Watched it become high-speed and then obsolete. Got a cell phone in middle school. Became a cyborg by high school.

I lived through 9/11. 2008. COVID. Racial reckoning.

I watched Obama get elected. Then Trump.

Entire industries collapsed: malls, chain restaurants, appointment television. The promise of a career that ends with a gold watch.

Every year or so has been described as a turning point. A reckoning. Something we'll survive.

So I've stopped trying to live at the scale of history.

I live in the micro now.

I wake up earlier than I want to. I scroll when I shouldn't. I write a little. I rush more than I mean to. I fuss and forget something almost every day.

I've learned to stop fighting the rhythms. Consistency doesn't mean sameness. Some days I'm writing at 4 a.m. Some days, I'm rolling out of bed just in time to get my kid to school. Both matter.

Five weeks in, there are a few things I thought would matter more than they do:

Being ahead of schedule. Having a niche. Other people's opinions of my work.

And there are a few things I seem to believe right now, subject to revision:

Turning your phone off at night makes mornings easier.

Consistency helps motivation last longer.

Clarity usually arrives after action, though it would be more helpful if it came before.

Posting here each week hasn't changed my life in a dramatic way. But it has given my attention somewhere to land. It's made me notice how often I live inside ideas instead of days. How quickly I skip past what's happening in favor of what it's supposed to mean.

And it has slowed something down. It's made me more attentive to what's here, not what I thought should be. To what is good, not what sounds good.

That includes you.

You're here, reading something I wrote, when you could be anywhere else. In a world that keeps announcing itself as extraordinary, that simple exchange feels like the most extraordinary thing of all.

Thank you for being here.

See you next week. 🥂