I wasn’t actually positive if I could do 100 blogs in 100 days. Still not, really. The thing seemed far beyond my reach, kind of like a juice cleanse or saying you’re going to submit your taxes before the end of January. Something so ridiculous, so what’s the harm in trying it?

I’m only a day behind, turns out. Thought I could get a second one out yesterday, but instead I hung out with my wife. We’re getting close to Twin o’clock so we just need some extra nights to relax, be with one another, and contemplate our inevitable lack of ability to pee with the door closed.

Basically, I’ve had a few cheat blogs.

Entries were copied over from a morning pages journal entry from a while ago or kept it short enough to be an Instagram post.

But, see, in art, that’s enough. That’s more than enough.

Thanks to Maria Popova for bringing this to my attention:

The most appealing daily schedule I know is that of a turn-of-the-century Danish aristocrat.

He got up at four and set out on foot to hunt black grouse, wood grouse, woodcock, and snipe. At eleven he met his friends, who had also been out hunting alone all morning. They converged “at one of these babbling brooks,” he wrote.

He outlined the rest of his schedule. “Take a quick dip, relax with a schnapps and a sandwich, stretch out, have a smoke, take a nap or just rest, and then sit around and chat until three. Then I hunt some more until sundown, bathe again, put on white tie and tails to keep up appearances, eat a huge dinner, smoke a cigar and sleep like a log until the sun comes up again to redden the eastern sky. This is living…. Could it be more perfect?”

–Annie Dillard

What can you pull from this Dillard quote? Well, besides the idea of “relaxing with a schnapps and a sandwich” and how pleasant that must be.

This is how we’re living. There’s no greater goal. It’s now. In the moment.

“But, wait,” you might be asking, “how does this apply to blogging short entries?” Don’t worry. I hear you, disembodied voice.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.

A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.

– Annie Dillard

Be present. Be there. That’s enough, sometimes. Sit down at your computer. Open the document. Don’t be afraid of it. Just stare at it. That’s enough. That can be a writing victory for the day.

So, here’s another entry down.

Thanks for reading,

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