Readers: I’m currently documenting my experiment to get up every weekday at 5-ish until the end of February.

I’m here. I’m up.

I was also here yesterday—Monday, the day after staying up a bit late after the Snoozer Bowl. I had a blog post started but it was really random stuff and I never quite got back to turning it into something cohesive so I never published it. I knew it was crap, so I didn’t feel motivated to go back and work with it. Into the dustbin it goes.

These things happen. When you’re trying to do something creative, you have to throw shit out. That seems normal and acceptable, right? Of course it does. But I sometimes still feel like a loser for not effortlessly churning out super-interesting stuff every time I sit down here.

So how’s the experiment going? I’m tired. I was hoping to spring out of bed this morning and report that I felt magically creative and zippity-do-dah and all that horseshit but I will admit that I’m pooped. And I was pooped all day yesterday and I felt like my productivity was pretty low until the afternoon.

This is disappointing. I wanted this to be a magic bullet of awesomeness. But I have to remind myself that I’m only a quarter into this experiment (fuuuuuuuck me …) and that I gave myself a month for a reason. Any new change is painful. I knew there would be pain, but I wanted to build a mechanism to work past the pain.

I used to write a newsletter about OSHA and workplace safety. We always advised safety directors to implement changes with a two-week tryout period. Why? Because most people are inherently whiny about change and will immediately boo-hoo about anything they have to do that’s not the way they’ve always done it. Two weeks gives people time to get used to stuff so they can see the benefits.

That seems like excellent advice. Yet … Genius Trish over here decided to try a month.

Anyway … I’m going to jump off here because I have something else I need to work on. I’m giving a talk next week on Valentine’s Day … about what, you might ask? Dating! One of my favorite topics. I’m going to use the rest of this morning’s time to continue gathering my thoughts and the coffee is finally kicking in. I feel tiny little shoots of thoughts poking up through the ground … I think.

Have a great day, peeps.