We Can Choose a Different Way

I turned on the lights. I’m not sitting at my desk. I’m feeling rebellious. Or ornery.

When we change habits a whole slew of rationale will come including challenging feelings. It’s all stirred up by the cognitive dissonance of habitual action hitting the new awareness of I now do this not that. This morning that happened when I turned on the lights. Immediately it changed everything.

I’ve been waking earlier and writing in the stillness of a day that has yet to fully fledge. It’s a completely new habit which I alone hold the power to render that statement true. I am the one who wakes up early and writes.

Then I turned on the lights. Mayhem. Gone was the precious hush of moving through stillness to voice. I was now in the kitchen flicking on lights, rash rationale tumbling quicker than I could fill the kettle with water. The inner debate was on. Am I, will you be a writer? Will you do what you say you will do?

The answer this morning is yes, though not at my desk and not in the dark, I write.

We can choose to do things a different way.