Cheat days

Have you ever sat down to do something that you really love doing, and you know you do beyond a shadow of a doubt, but you sit down and you just really aren't feeling it? You can't really explain why, but even though you normally love doing it, you just have no desire to at the time?

That happens to me more than I'd like to admit with writing. It's not something that makes me question why I'm writing, though I know that if I ever mention it to someone, that will be the first thing they ask me. Writing makes me happy. It always has. It makes me feel alive, and like I'm actually doing something with my time, whereas most other things make me feel like I'm just wasting away until I get to the next thing of any value. And yet, there are times when I just don't feel any desire to write. In fact, I feel a desire to not be writing. 

That is happening to me right now, as I write this very blog entry. You may be asking yourself, if that's the case, why am I even bothering? Or you may be wondering, if that is something that I previously knew about myself, why did I decide to take it upon myself to write a significant block of text on a daily basis? 

To put it simply, I'm doing it for much the same reason a person goes on a diet. It's something that I feel is necessary for me. It is something through which I want to better myself. And some days it sucks. Some days I want to throw it all aside, say that it's not the end of the world. Take a cheat day, as a dieter might. 

So why don't I?

Because I've taken cheat days before. In other things in my life that I've wanted to better. And it doesn't work for me. I can't just take a cheat day and then come back to it. I have to go full haul, cold turkey, whatever you want to call it. It might as well be 110% or nothing at all. 

So even on days where I hate writing, where I want absolutely nothing to do with the process, I write. Because I know that in the morning I'll be glad I did.