24.

I wondered today why I keep coming back to this blog, day after day, forcing myself to write an essay whether I'm in the mood or not, whether I'm exhausted from work or not, whether I have time or not, whether I have anything to write about or not. I've never had trouble with commitment, but god knows I've never been this diligent or dedicated to anything else before. The truth is, this project has come to mean much more to me than I had ever considered it would. Now that I'm finishing the first quarter of my goal, I already find myself wondering what my next project will be. What is it about one essay a day that keeps me awake writing even through a bout of gastroenteritis, a ridiculously long week at work and personal commitments that leave me busy till midnight?

It's true what the self-help books say about setting goals for yourself, but writing every day is less about keeping myself busy and more about proving to myself that I can do whatever it is I decide to do. When I fail to write, I fail myself, not because what I am writing is important, but because if I can't even manage to do what I love for one hundred days, how will I ever do anything else with any amount of dedication?

Writing-and writing publicly-forces me to be an even tougher critic than I am on an ordinary basis. I constantly put myself down over the content, style, length and frequency (I don't always do one a day, sometimes I skip days and make up with more than one on an extra-creative day) of my blog. It's a way for me to censure and congratulate myself in equal measure, to feel like I am doing something that matters, because I'm doing it without anyone asking me to. As much as I would like to believe some anonymous syndicate likes to privately follow my blog and will call me Day 100 to offer me a job, I know it won't happen. What will happen though, is that I will have proved to myself in one hundred ways that I can do something just because I can.