Progress = Redefining Bad Days

After a couple weeks of excellent writing progress, I’ve fizzled…or at least, my momentum has lessened. When things were going well, I could easily spend at least a couple consecutive hours writing, generating and editing quite a few paragraphs, enjoying it at least somewhat, and feeling pretty good about what I’d written. The last week or so, the paragraphs have been painful to come by. Sometimes I have found myself watching the clock, in hopes that the slow-moving writing minutes would slide by a little more quickly.

The beginning of my good writing stretch coincided with my resolution to work on my dissertation four hours each day (it is a full-time job, after all!). Some of the bad writing days occurred when, due to circumstance or poor planning, I did not get in my 4 hours, or I waited until 10:00 p.m. to start, resulting in an even more screwed-up sleep schedule than usual and decreasing the probability of doing well the next day.

However, this rough writing patch has served to point out just how far I have really come. My last few bad writing days have each still resulted in over an hour of actual writing!! Wow! A few months ago, a lousy writing day was actually a no-writing day, surrounded on either side by 7 other no-writing days. And a lousy dissertation day, instead of being a day in which all I do is read a couple articles or organize my references, was a hiding-from-my-dissertation day in which I made no progress at all. (Actually, I’m convinced that a no-dissertation-work day is actually a negative-progress day…if I stay away from it for even a day, I lose touch with my train of thought and plans for my study, and I have to go backwards when I restart.)

We recently spent a weekend in Corpus Christi for a mini-vacation (yes, I worked on my dissertation and maintained my writing streak in the hotel room). One afternoon, I went for a run on the seawall jogging trail. Expecting to get in 5 miles, I found myself totally wiped out after less than 2. I was hot and miserable, and the whole thing just felt like it was uphill (it wasn’t, flat as a pancake). I started taking walk breaks at 2 miles, and whenever I started running again, it didn’t last long. Eventually I gave it up and walked back to the hotel, feeling pretty unhappy about my lack of discipline, and having serious second thoughts about letting Dave Mows Grass talk me into the Winslow Half-Marathon next month. According to the technology genie on my wrist, I went 4 miles before turning it off, but I’m sure I only ran 3 of those.

The more I thought about it, the less discouraged I became. Hey, I just ran three-fourths of a 4-mile stretch of sun-baked concrete, no shade, at 95ºF, and who-knows-how-high humidity. Three years ago, would I have ever dreamed I could do such a thing? Heck, I couldn’t run to the end of the block! So this bad day, far from being cause for hopelessness, is actually a miraculous victory.

When I have a really bad day, whether it involves writing, running, losing my temper, or whatever, I need to remember where I started. If the current bad day looks better than the good days once looked, then I’m on the right track. (I’m sure the reverse is also true…if the current good days look worse than the bad days used to look, something probably needs to change.)

One more thing: guess what happened the very next day after the aborted run on the seawall? Scott dropped me off at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, and I ran 11 miles back to the hotel! And enjoyed most of it!

In spite of a few bad writing days, my writing streak now numbers 31 days, exactly 15.5 times longer than my previous longest writing streak. And while today was not a great day dissertation-wise, as I spent a good chunk of it being a lazy bum, I still got in over an hour of productive writing. Even better, I didn’t mind doing it, and quit while I still had some momentum. Hopefully that will carry over into tomorrow’s session.

So, well-wishing friends, remember that we all need to think long-term trajectory, not short-term current state. If we catch each other wanting to give up because of a bad day, or a bad week, let’s remind each other just how far we’ve come! (Of course, sometimes a well-placed kick in the rear is in order instead, but that’s a topic for another day.)