Today’s blog is the first one since starting the 52 posts in 52 weeks challenge that I really thought about missing a week. It has been a long weekend. To be honest, it was a long week followed by a long weekend. My amazing new job has been going really well. After a great week they decided to put me on call for the weekend. This is great because it shows that the company is gaining faith in me. Well, being on call comes with the possibility of being called into work, hence “on call”. Nothing happened Friday night and I thought I might be in good shape until Saturday morning. I got called into work at 8:00 am and I didn’t get home until 10:00 at night. I missed Katie’s uncle and aunt’s 40th anniversary party which I feel pretty guilty about. He works in the same industry as I do so he understands, but I still feel guilty.

Sunday has gone pretty well so far, though as I write this there is plenty of time for that to change. I basically crammed all of my weekend into today, complete with my weekly laundry and yardwork. I did have to work for about an hour, but that was no big deal. I also got to spend a little time with Katie’s family including my sister in laws that live too far away. I also got to see their significant others so I did get to see some of the people that I missed the day before for a little while before they all have to go home. I still missed a bunch of others that I would have loved to see.

After running a few more errands Katie, Brennen, and I got home and I was thinking about bed when all of a sudden it hit me. I still hadn’t written a word for this blog. I have a couple of great ideas for future blogs that I thought about as I mowed the grass, but nothing on paper. Worse, though the ideas are pretty good, or at least I hope they are, I don’t have the time to do them justice tonight. Both ideas need more than an hour or two to be written well. I want to do a recap of the 5 Boro Tour of New York and I want to talk about motivation again. I almost wrote that one tonight, but I wanted to take a little more time with it, even if it does tie into this post.

I’ve been pretty open about why I started blogging and trying to find a focus for what I am writing. Cycling seems like an obvious choice as it has quickly become my main hobby. I am getting a tad obsessed with it as I am even reading about how to ride better and more efficiently. If that isn’t the ultimate nerd move, I don’t know what is. The idea of reading a book to refine a physical discipline is a little over the top. The fact that I have four or five of these books along with a repair book and a couple of miscellaneous books is definitely over the top. The upside is I am learning more and more about my new favorite pastime; the downside is that I see how far I have to go to be able to write about it from any perspective other than hopeless newbie. I also want to write about fitness, or at least what I do when I try to be a little healthier than I am now which isn’t that hard. The difficulty here is that what works for me might not work for you, or even be safe for you. Or really, it might not even be safe for me. Or a good idea in general.
This lack of focus makes it difficult to write something when I am short on time and short on ideas that don’t require pictures or research. I end up writing about the process of writing a blog and I am not sure how entertaining that is for anyone. It can be fun to break the fourth wall once in a while and today is going to be one of those days where you get to see into my office.

I can honestly say that I thought about skipping this week. I thought about posting a quick update tomorrow that said that I had to work all weekend and that I would make it up to you later in the week. I realized that I would be cheating the people who look for an update on Mondays and it would be cheating me. I made a choice to post 52 blogs in 52 weeks. I wrote rules, most of which I have either broken or will probably break, but I can’t break the important one. A blog must post on Monday. That is really the only important rule.

That is part of how I motivate myself to attempt the things that I have been trying lately. I set an unrealistic goal but I try anyway. There will be more on this in the motivation blog, but with the blog I read about other bloggers taking the once a week for a year challenge and decided that I had to try. It was more realistic when I was unemployed, but I have been making it work for a couple of months now. It hasn’t been easy, but a challenge shouldn’t be easy. It should be something that pushes you to go a little further than you planned on going. It should be something that offers you the promise of accomplishing something big if you are able to succeed, or you should be able to be proud to have tried your best if you fail. That is part of why I try to stretch and go for goals that are just out of reach. It wasn’t always like that, and again, that is something for my motivation blog.

I wanted to quit today. I wanted to go to bed and say that 20-something blogs was good enough. I wanted to get that extra hour more of sleep before Monday but I just couldn’t. I am 23 blogs into the challenge, including today’s attempt. That is three short of halfway. I began writing in the cold of January and I am sitting by an open window in June. I can’t quit now, it’s far too late. I have to keep trying to post each Monday to be fair to myself. If something happens out of my control, well, I’ll live with that. I just can’t quit because I was tired or lazy.

Do you guys have something like that? Something you almost wanted to quit but you just couldn’t?