The wet Tuesday

It's a Tuesday in February and it's raining. You got home at half past six because the meeting ran over, there's nothing in for dinner, and a form needs signing. This is the day. It's the same day as the one in chapter 1.

The difference is that on Sunday you wrote a sentence for it. Ten to eight, out of the front door, fifteen minutes, and if you're home after seven, a ten-minute walk instead. You're home after seven. So it's the walk. You sign the form, you put something in the oven, and at ten to eight you put on the shoes that were an accusation last year and are just shoes now, and you go out into the rain for ten minutes, and you come back, and it wasn't much, and it happened.

Nothing about that evening had a push behind it. No clean page, no picture, no January. It was a plain wet day with a plan small enough for it, and the plan held because it was built for a day exactly like this one. That's the whole of the argument. The wish was never going to be there at ten to eight on a wet Tuesday. A sentence can be.

On Sunday you'll look at the week. Two runs and a walk. You'll notice that the walk was on the day with the late meeting, and you'll leave the sentence as it is, because it worked. In three weeks you might make it twenty minutes. By March it'll still be there, which the wish never was. The half marathon, or the novel, or the language, is still on the wall where you pinned it, as large as ever, and for the first time there's a line of Tuesdays running towards it.

One action, today. Take the biggest wish on your list, and write one sentence about the next ordinary day. What, when, where, and what instead. Then close the book and do the least version tomorrow.