THE BORING TUESDAY

I sat down to write this morning for the first time in a while.

Not because I hadn't been writing. I'd published a few things recently.

But it had been some time since I'd sat down with nothing more than my thoughts, a cup of coffee, and the willingness to see where they might take me.

And it felt wonderful.

Which raised an uncomfortable question.

If writing gives me such a profound sense of purpose, if I believe so deeply in what I'm trying to build through it, why the hell had I stopped making time for it?

I hadn't lost interest.

I hadn't run out of things to say.

I certainly hadn't become too busy to find an hour.

I'd just drifted.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the drifting had been bothering me for weeks.

I just hadn't recognized what was causing the discomfort.

I knew exactly what mattered to me.

I'd simply stopped living as though it did.

For much of the last year, my life had been organized around putting it back together.

A marriage had ended.

My finances needed attention.

My relationship with alcohol needed serious reconsideration.

I was rebuilding my health, establishing a carpentry business, and examining the decisions that had brought me to a place I never imagined I'd find myself.

There was plenty to do.

And for all the pain that accompanied that period, there was something almost comforting about its clarity.

When your life is falling apart, the work announces itself.

Get healthy.

Get working.

Pay the bills.

Stop making things worse.

Start making things better.

You don't need a five-year plan to know what needs your attention when the roof is leaking.

But eventually, if you do the work, the emergencies become less frequent.

You begin to recover.

Your health improves.

You begin to trust yourself again.

The life that once felt impossible to navigate becomes something you actually enjoy.

And then something unexpected happens.

The urgency that organized your days begins to disappear.

For a long time, I was working to become a man I could respect again.

Now I find myself facing a very different question.

What am I going to do with the man I've become?

Recovery had given me direction without requiring me to invent it.

Purpose was going to require something else.

I've always been a curious person.

I love learning things.

Exploring new interests.

Figuring out how stuff works.

Recently, adventure motorcycling has captured my imagination.

In it, I’ve discovered a whole new world. . .

People riding incredibly capable motorcycles into the remotest places on earth.

Camping beside magnificent waterfalls that are all but unreachable on foot.

Crossing mountains, exploring small towns, meeting new people and generally having the kind of adventures that make me feel like a kid again.

I can spend hours watching videos about riding techniques, camping equipment, motorcycle maintenance, and places I might someday explore.

And I enjoy every single minute of it.

There's nothing wrong with any of that.

Until there is.

Because there's always another video. Another interesting piece of equipment.

Another technique to learn.

And somewhere along the way. . .

One hour becomes three.

All while the work that might actually change my life sits in the corner patiently waiting for me.

I've seen this tendency in my carpentry business, too.

Imagine a man who wants to build his dream home.

He loves woodworking.

Studies construction techniques.

Watches videos about framing, roofing and joinery.

Buys tools whenever he finds a great deal.

One day he discovers a beautiful cordless router on sale.

He doesn't have a project that requires a router, but it's a terrific tool at an even better price.

So he buys it.

A year later, he owns a remarkable collection of equipment.

He knows a lot more about building houses than he did a year ago.

But he hasn't built one.

He can account for every hour he spent over the last year preparing to build it.

He just can't point to anything he's built.

I know that man. . .

. . .“well of course I know him. He’s me.”

Now, there's nothing wrong with exploration.

Some of the most valuable things I've learned came from following interests without knowing where they'd lead.

But there's an important distinction.

Exploration is necessary when you're discovering what you want.

Exploration becomes avoidance when you already know what you want and continue exploring instead of pursuing it.

And that's where I found myself.

I wasn't lacking interests, ambition, or direction.

I knew what I wanted.

I just wasn't consistently doing the things that would get me there.

Here's something that stopped me in my tracks this morning.

I hold writing in extraordinarily high esteem.

In my heart, I believe it's among the most important things I can do with my time.

I believe the lessons I've learned, often the hard way, might be useful to another man navigating his own life.

Because of this, I believe the work matters.

And I love doing it.

Yet if someone examined my calendar over the last several weeks, they might reach a very different conclusion about how important writing was to me.

I'd given it whatever time was left over.

I'd made it elective.

Something to do when I was in the mood.

When the day allowed for it.

When nothing else seemed more appealing.

I'd somehow placed one of the most meaningful pursuits in my life on roughly the same priority level as grabbing a slice of pepperoni and a beer at my favorite neighborhood pizza joint.

And I hadn't even noticed.

We tend to measure our priorities by how strongly we feel about them.

We love our families. Value our health. Want financial security.

Dream about creating something meaningful.

And we sincerely believe those things are important.

But our behavior often tells a different story.

A man can believe his marriage is the most important thing in his life while giving it whatever attention remains after everything else.

He can believe his health is sacred while repeatedly postponing the things that protect it.

He can talk about wanting financial prosperity while making dozens of small decisions that quietly undermine it.

And he can believe, with absolute sincerity, that he's found his purpose while treating the pursuit of it as an elective.

A man can know exactly what matters to him and still spend his days living as though something else matters more.

That one stings because I know it’s true.

There's one area of my life where this doesn't seem to happen anymore.

Training.

I've spent years going in and out of gyms.

Sometimes I'd train consistently for months, even years.

Then life would happen.

Circumstances would change and I'd drift away.

Often, returning to the gym coincided with some disappointment.

A breakup.

A setback.

A period when I needed to reclaim some sense of control over my life.

Initially, the motivation was straightforward.

I wanted to look good.

Still do, if we're being honest.

But something changed over the last year.

Training stopped being something I did to repair my confidence or improve my appearance.

It became something I did because I loved how it made me feel.

Stronger. Healthier. More capable.

More alive.

Eventually, it became part of my identity.

I no longer wake up wondering whether I'm motivated to train.

I train.

Not every day.

Not without interruptions.

But I don't interpret those interruptions as abandoning the practice.

I simply return to it.

I can't imagine a version of my future in which training isn't part of my life.

And that realization gave me something important.

Proof.

Proof that I'm capable of sustaining a behavior long enough for it to become part of who I am.

Proof that consistency isn't some mysterious quality possessed by other men.

I've done it.

Which means the question isn't whether I'm capable of making other meaningful pursuits equally important.

It's how.

And perhaps the answer begins with understanding something about motivation.

I don't always feel like going to the gym.

But I don't require myself to feel like going.

The decision has already been made.

Most of us don't need another person to explain that exercise is good for them.

Or that spending less than we earn is wise.

Or that our relationships require attention.

Or that dreams don't become reality simply because we think about them often enough.

We know.

God, do we know.

We can explain the principles.

Give advice.

Recognize the mistakes other people are making.

And then spend three hours researching motorcycle panniers while the work that might actually change our lives sits in the corner patiently waiting.

Part of the problem is that the things offering us immediate pleasure are remarkably good at getting our attention.

A video is ready whenever we want it.

A little purchase offers a satisfying reward.

A beer with a friend requires nothing more than showing up.

But the work that matters?

It usually asks something of us before it gives anything back.

Attention. Effort. Vulnerability. Patience.

Sometimes frustration.

And there's no guarantee that today's effort will produce anything we can point to tomorrow.

That's particularly true of writing.

I might spend an entire day working on something that never gets published.

I might write something I'm enormously proud of that reaches only a handful of people.

And yet, when I do the work, I feel connected to something that matters deeply to me.

There's a satisfaction in that which no amount of comfortable distraction seems able to replace.

The things that offer us the easiest pleasure aren’t generally the things that leave us feeling most satisfied.

That doesn't make pleasure the enemy.

I love my motorcycle adventures.

I enjoy exploring something interesting.

A good life ought to contain plenty of moments that serve no greater purpose than being enjoyed.

But there's a big difference between enjoying those things and allowing them to quietly replace the pursuits that give our lives meaning.

And perhaps that's why I'd been feeling so unsettled.

I was spending plenty of time doing things I enjoyed.

But not enough time doing the things that made me feel most like myself.

I've written before about what I call The Boring Tuesday. . .

The ordinary, unremarkable days when nothing particularly exciting happens.

But the choices we make on The Boring tuesday quietly determine the direction of our lives.

I'm beginning to think it's one of the most important ideas I've encountered in trying to understand how a man changes.

For a long time, I imagined transformation arriving through some extraordinary combination of inspiration, determination, and decisive action.

A breakthrough.

A declaration.

A day when everything finally clicked and I became the man who did all the things he'd always intended to do.

But I'm beginning to understand that the extraordinary life isn't built on extraordinary days.

It's built on Tuesdays.

The ones where nothing particularly exciting happens.

Where there's no crisis demanding our attention, no dramatic revelation, no surge of inspiration carrying us effortlessly toward our goals.

Just a day.

And a choice about what to do with it.

And at this stage of my life, I'm becoming increasingly aware of something I didn't give much thought to when I was younger.

There aren't an unlimited number of Tuesdays left.

That's not meant to be morbid.

It's simply the arithmetic of being alive.

At twenty-five, a year spent figuring things out seemed like a perfectly reasonable investment.

There was plenty of time to change direction, start over, try something else.

At fifty-one, a year still holds extraordinary possibilities.

But it also represents a considerably larger portion of whatever time remains.

And the troubling thing about drift is that it rarely appears as wasted time.

It can look like a pleasant afternoon.

A fascinating new interest.

A little purchase.

Nothing particularly wrong with any of it.

Until you realize that the days are passing and the things you say matter most aren't receiving much of your attention.

And then a month has gone by.

Then a year.

And you're left wondering why, despite having a life filled with things you enjoy, you don't feel particularly fulfilled.

That's where I found myself.

Not miserable. Not bored. Certainly not without interests.

But increasingly disconnected from something I couldn't quite identify.

I'd begun experiencing a strange absence of enthusiasm.

A flattening of the excitement I ordinarily feel about my life.

It concerned me.

I knew something wasn't quite right, but I couldn't identify what had changed.

And then, this morning, I sat down to write.

Not because I felt particularly inspired.

Not because I'd made some grand commitment to reinvent my life.

I simply sat down and began doing something that had always mattered deeply to me.

I started thinking. Examining.

Following a few uncomfortable observations to see where they led.

And somewhere along the way, I recognized what had been missing.

I hadn't lost my purpose.

I'd stopped practicing it.

I'd mistaken knowing what mattered to me for actually giving it a meaningful place in my life.

And the relief I felt in recognizing that was immediate and extraordinary.

Not because I'd solved every problem or discovered some permanent cure for drifting.

But because I'd finally identified something I could do about it.

I don't imagine this morning has cured me of drifting.

I'll drift again.

I'll get distracted.

Follow some fascinating tangent.

Spend too much time on something that doesn't deserve quite so much of it.

I'll probably buy another tool I don't need.

But I think I'm beginning to understand something about the practices that matter most to us.

Their value isn't always measured by what we accomplish in the moment, while doing them.

Sometimes their greatest value is that they keep us in regular contact with the person we're trying to become.

Some mornings I'll write something worth publishing.

Other mornings I'll produce three pages that never see the light of day.

But I'll have sat down.

I'll have given something that matters to me a place in my day.

Not because I felt especially inspired.

Not because everything else was finished.

But because I decided that something important deserved my attention, whether I felt sufficiently compelled to give it or not.

I spent much of the last year learning how to become a man I could respect again.

Now I want to find out what I can do with the man I've become.

And I suspect that answer won't arrive in some spectacular moment of clarity.

It will reveal itself in the ordinary days, through the work I choose to do, the commitments I choose to honor, and the quiet accumulation of effort over time.

This morning was a Tuesday.

Nothing remarkable happened.

I made some coffee.

I sat down to write.

And for the first time in a while, I felt like I'd come home.