One Week

The Deep End #8

“The Monitor and the Merrimac,” located in McGolrick (“Winthrop”) Park, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

One week to kill it all.

One week will kill your momentum.

Whether it’s a new book, assignment, yoga membership, or diet. All it takes to kill any of them is to miss just one week. Miss a week and all hope, progress, and momentum gets so far out of your clutches it will become nearly impossible to reel back in.

If you go off the deep end on your diet and binge eat for a week, just one week, you could put back on all the weight you lost plus a little extra for good measure.

If you’re prepping to start your own business venture, one missed week is utter calamity. So soon gone are the connections, phone calls, and the help. If you go radio silent for a week it could put out all of those embers.

That one missed week will stop you dead in your tracks. Leaving you back at square one, with your foot planted on the gas with the car shifted in reverse.

I’ve been sick all week. Haven’t left the house. Haven’t had the capacity to do my normal work. Thinking Man’s social media pages and my own book have been left in the hold department until my brain starts to act like itself again. The only problem is, one week is a long time, and I’m one weak mother fucker.

Missing that week is the perfect excuse for me to hang up my cleats, to close the page, to put my hopes and dreams back where they belong: in the farthest corner of my mind. The spot in your brain reserved for late night visits made by every single regret you ever had. They tend to pop up right before you’re about to drift off into sleep.

These days, one week goes by so fast you didn’t even know it was there before it already crossed itself off the calendar and made room for the next one to take its place.

When you’re working hard, this sounds like a good thing. The speed by which the week flows gets you that much closer to Friday night. Then you can rest all weekend! Only for the weekend to go even quicker, thus catapulting you into another work week. This goes on in an infinite loop for what seems like ever. Until forever comes to an end.

One week to a busy adult almost feels shorter than one of those hot summer days when you were seven and a whole day seemed to last an eternity.

Which brings me to my point.

One week may go fast, but it could also take forever to get through, too.

When you are doing what you’re supposed to do, like the things that really make you happy and fulfilled, each day becomes an all out fight to the death. To be able to crawl into bed knowing you crossed off every goal you set for yourself that day is a victory not to be taken lightly.

Picture this: You just completed an eight to twelve hour day at work. Your butt is getting acclimated to the soothing warmth of the car’s heated seat, when suddenly — two options pop up on your dashboard. Each option is being held on a little billboard by a tiny version of you.

Option One: the weak version of you. This version of you tells you to make a sprint towards home. Get in the safety of your apartment stat! There you can curl up on the couch, crack open a few beers, microwave some pizza, and watch TV.

Option Two: the version of you striving for greatness. This version of you is telling you to go to the gym, a workshop, the library, the coffee shop, or anywhere else you can become a better version of the person you are at that very moment.

It’s almost instinctual to choose option one and side with the weak version of yourself. Take the lazy way out. Rinse and repeat for time immemorial and call it a life.

It’s so tempting.

But instead, you choose option two. And you choose it every single time. Because it’s what you want and it’s what makes you feel good after the fact. Option two isn’t pretty. It’s hard work. It tests the limits of who you are as a person.

Option two is the only way to salvation. It’s what makes the weeks feel like months. It’s why every day is a fight to the death. A battle between the weak you and the you you want to be.

It’s a war to get 1% better every day.

There's a problem with this. Your psyche wants you to choose option one.

It’s safe, it’s there, it keeps you doing what you already know. Why get better? Why change? Change is scary.

Option one makes the days congeal together into one big haze. When you can’t remember what you did last weekend, it all blends in. It’s what makes the weeks feel like days.

Those days turn into months, and years.

It’s one week that can change everything. Because if you stop doing what you are supposed to for just one week, it goes by so fast that once you’re able to lift your head out of your own ass, two months have passed. Eight weeks flew by in the matter of one. Your partner in that business idea, your book, or your diet is completely gone.

In the smoky embers, as you try to pick up the pieces, you’re heavier and left to make a decision: start now or keep up the status quo. Be wary not to give yourself a week to decide, because that week will only turn into another few months. Soon a whole year is lost.

Is that you? Because right now, it’s me.

Everything I’m doing is hanging by the smallest of threads. It’s been a week and I haven’t done anything I was supposed to do. Yes I was sick, but it doesn’t matter. Why? Because it’s so damn easy to let everything go for another week.

You can always convince yourself too. Make it make sense in your head.

The extra week rest would help me be better for the week after. Until there’s four different unforeseen plans that next week, so it’s better to just get a fresh start after that one. Surely that next week would give me an excuse to postpone yet another week. It’s that easy to fall into the trap. Don’t fool yourself.

But, hey, I’m writing this right now. So maybe there’s hope. Maybe that means there’s hope for you, too. If you want it bad enough.

If you miss a week, or two, or ten, all it takes is one second to reverse everything. One split second decision could put you on a path to change your entire life, but only if you’re strong enough to fight the war to the finish. And that war is from the minute you wake up, until the minute you go to bed. Are you strong enough to join the fight?