Picture this: you’re sitting at your desk at 10:45pm, sleep deprived, fatigued from work, sore from a workout and in the process of mindlessly eating your fourth punnet of strawberries. Your whole body begs you to read a book and go to bed. However, it’s a Thursday and you’re supposed to write. You begin to bargain with yourself. Just a short nap. Then you can write your stupid post. But you don’t trust your body to wake up. Just hold on for 10 minutes, you mutter. So here you are, staring at an empty Word document with no real goal in mind.

Ah, hello there.

Out of sheer desperation, you google, “how to write when you don’t want to” and click the first link. You give it a skim read – you’re too tired to read it in depth – and it’s surprisingly informative. You read about a self-discipline muscle. A muscle that grows with consistency and atrophies with days off. The author, Carter Barnett, encourages you to set the bar low if you need to, so long as you train it. You wonder how low it can be set.

After a while, the author ends with: The best way to write when you don’t want to is to just write when you don’t want to.

Exactly what you don’t want to see.

However, reading the muscle analogy reminds you of the importance of consistency. The importance of just showing up. That writing something trash is far better than not writing anything at all. So, you decide to jot this experience down, even if it’s the worst thing you’ve ever written.

Alas, here’s to the lazy days. To the days that seem long, heavy and suffocating. To the days where your eyelids feel like lead. To the days where you wish the Earth could just swallow you up. Here’s to facing these crazy forces and saying, “look, I surrender but just hang on for a sec –” and quickly rushing off to your responsibilities. Like an Asian kid throwing rice in the rice cooker right before the mum arrives. It could be disgraceful. You could end up doing the poorest job you’ve ever done. But at least you showed up and tried. And who knows? Maybe next time, it won’t be so hard.

You glance at the clock and realise it’s 11:22pm. Over 30 minutes since you started. Oi, you only said 10 minutes, your tired self mumbles. Sorry. But you guess it’s time for bed.