In which I answer your unasked question, “Can a daily habit truly be established and brilliant in two days’ time?”

Y’all, no.

There. I answered the question. Can I go?

I kid. I’m definitely sticking around the 666 word mark like yesterday, but probably not much past that. In my journaling and musings and ruminations (i.e. the things I think about when I’m spacing out while playing some embarrassing phone game), I keep coming back to a sign I would see hanging over a bakery door in Santa Cruz, California. The bakery was called Emily’s Good Things to Eat and the internet tells me it closed back in 2023, which is SOME BULLSHIT HOW DARE YOU QUIT THE BAKING BUSINESS AFTER FORTY-ONE YEARS GOD EMILY, but whatever.

I would see this sign when I would invariably find myself speeding down Mission on my way to campus up at UC Santa Cruz (Go Slugs!) and I actually hated it and would curse it, etc. However as I have gotten older I have realized that, well, fuck, the sign was right.

In case you can’t quite make it out, the sign in question is on the half-dome awning, nestled inside the flames. It reads, “Relax… You have p l e n t y of time.” Is there anything as infuriating as seeing some hippie crap telling you to chill when you’ve already been battling traffic and you’re running late for the 8 a.m. class you signed up because you thought early class = responsibility = adult = better than all of you? While I am a proponent of getting up early because it feels nice and can make you more productive, forcing yourself to get up early because of some misguided sense of superiority that will somehow be conferred upon you because you’re out the door in the dark FOR NO DISCERNIBLE REASON is the pinnacle of foolishness. Yes, I could have taken the later section or signed up for a class that didn’t start stupid early, so this was all me being insufferable– shocker.

Can you imagine if at twenty I’d somehow been able to be gentle with myself and, who knows, maybe realize that I had plenty of time and that I should have probably stopped in to get a croissant? Would I have gained even more weight? Yeah, probably but I’d already gained a Freshman Forty (okay more like Twenty but that doesn’t alliterate and frankly I gained more than Fifteen) and I thought I also didn’t deserve joy or self-compassion.

But that’s the truth. We all do have plenty of time until all our time runs out because we died: a truth that is hard to accept. That today is a great day to put up a second entry on a blog 2.0 but tomorrow is fine, too. That you can source your tears from the pain of putting yourself through grueling exercises in self-control– but store-bought tears are fine, too.

As for perfection, well. Is there such a thing? I remember reading years ago that the word perfect comes from the Latin, where it means “finished” or “complete,” as in “done”– NOT amazing-beautiful-never-in-need-of-polishing-or-revising. All the latter crap the word got saddled with probably comes from people feeling bad about not being awesome at something the first time around or whatever stories we tell ourselves about not living up to our collective potential.

Finally, as for sophomores– there is a lot of truth in being a wise fool. Actually, we are all wise fools: running headlong into big concrete walls and pushing pillows away because we’re strong and can handle things. And yet, also making it to old age with relatively few regrets, realizing that the wisdom comes from having lived long enough to blog about it.