Good: What happens when this is what I try to be all the time?

Hint: Being “good” is exhausting, and has nothing to do with “doing unto others”

It gets very tiresome trying to be “good” all the time.

And I don’t mean “good” in that “Do unto others” sense. I’d like to think I mostly succeed in that area, although there may well be some room for interpretation there. I’ll leave that for others to judge.

I mean “good” in the sense of doing all the things I’m supposed to do every single day. The things that quietly scream “I should do this” or, more accurately, “I promised myself I would do this, so I must.”

These include getting up at 6 AM on weekday mornings, journalling, keeping track of what I eat, going to the gym, practising music, and whatever requires my attention around the house. Plus a couple of volunteer gigs.

The list is not exhaustive, but it certainly can be exhausting. Some days, I feel like a pious medieval peasant trying to adhere to the church calendar.

And among all those “good” commitments, big and small, is the main reason I get out of bed every morning, namely to write as much as possible. Taken together, it makes for busy days.

These daily requirements are all self-imposed, of course, but each is a promise I’ve made to myself. I can (and occasionally do) skip one or the other on any given day but, each time I do, I’ve broken a promise to myself and chipped away a little piece of my self-respect. Not “good” at all.

Moreover, I do the things I do as a way of engaging the world, of meeting my life where it’s at. If I expect nothing of myself, that’s exactly what I’ll get in return. Drift and emptiness are sure to follow.

And that’s no way to navigate life in one’s “last quarter.”