Attempt #5, Day 3: Protect the Intention

I woke up at 4:00 a.m. this morning.

Not because I wanted to.

Because I'd left work unfinished yesterday, and I knew I had things waiting for me.

I stayed in bed until about 4:20, then reached over for my first 30-ounce bottle of water and started my day.

Before anything else, I did my morning devotion and pulled my tarot card.

The World reversed.

The message I took from it was about unfinished cycles, but more than that, it made me think about what happens when you're so focused on getting something finished that you lose sight of why you started it in the first place.

I didn't know it yet, but that card was basically going to narrate my entire day.

After my water, I took my progress photo.

And immediately realized something.

Maybe taking my progress photo after drinking 30 ounces of water isn't the smartest order.

Tomorrow, photo first.

Then water.

Some lessons are profound.

Some are just practical.

Morning Walk, Then Back to the Routine

After that, I headed out for my morning walk.

Up and down the hills.

The neighborhood wasn't nearly as busy as it had been the day before because today was only supposed to reach around 100 degrees.

Apparently we've reached the point in summer where 100 degrees sounds reasonable.

When I got home, I drank another 30 ounces of water and made my normal breakfast.

Two eggs over medium.

Two turkey sausage links.

Half a small avocado.

One slice of sourdough toast.

Black coffee.

After breakfast, I sat down, read my ten pages, and drank another 30 ounces of water.

The hydration system is definitely working better this time.

Instead of casually carrying water around all day and hoping I finish it, I'm sitting down at certain points and drinking the bottle.

Done.

Move on.

Much less mental energy.

Then I did my quick house reset and got ready for the main project of the day.

My First Video Podcast

Today I was going to record my first video podcast.

I've been doing audio for a long time.

Video is different.

Lighting.

Camera.

Angles.

Looking at yourself.

Remembering where to look.

Trying not to stare at yourself on the screen.

Trying to sound natural while also remembering that you're being recorded.

I gave myself an hour and a half to do it.

That was cute.

It took me almost four hours.

I restarted.

Adjusted things.

Tried again.

Stopped.

Tried again.

Learned things I had absolutely no idea I needed to learn before I started.

And because I was so determined to get the episode finished, I ended up moving two clients.

I kept one appointment.

When I got to my client's house, I drank another 30-ounce bottle of water.

At least one thing was going according to plan.

Then Came the Upload

Once I had finally recorded the episode, I started trying to edit and upload it whenever I had a break.

And nothing worked.

I uploaded it.

Nothing showed up.

I tried again.

Nothing.

I kept messing with it.

Still nothing.

At some point, I realized I had spent almost the entire day trying to force this thing across the finish line.

And it wasn't happening.

So I stopped.

I deleted the recording.

Not because I thought the podcast itself was bad.

That actually wasn't the problem.

The problem was that somewhere in my effort to make the video easier to record, I'd changed the episode too much.

I'd cut stories.

Shortened sections.

Removed pieces.

Simplified parts because I thought it would make filming faster.

And somewhere along the way...

the episode lost its intention.

It didn't feel like what I'd originally wanted to say anymore.

That bothered me more than the upload problems.

I Wasn't Starting Over

That's when The World reversed made sense to me.

I wasn't starting the episode over.

I was going back to what it was supposed to be.

I opened the script again and started restoring it.

The stories.

The reflections.

The pieces that gave the episode its heart.

I realized I'd been trying to solve the wrong problem.

I wasn't trying to make the podcast better.

I was trying to make the podcast easier to film.

Those aren't always the same thing.

And if making it easier means stripping out the parts that make the message matter...

I don't want easier.

I'd rather it take longer.

I'd rather the episode be late.

I'd rather learn how to get better at video than change the message until it's convenient to record.

I want the episode to say what I actually meant for it to say.

The Sunflower Farm That Didn't Happen

There was something else I'd planned for today.

My Seasonal Embodiment Calendar had me going to a sunflower farm to pick fresh sunflowers.

I create these calendars because I don't want to wake up one day and realize an entire season went by while I was staring at a laptop.

I want to notice August.

I want summer to actually feel like summer.

But there was no sunflower farm today.

The podcast took over.

Something had to give.

So I asked my partner if he'd stop and get me some sunflowers instead.

When he got to the store, he called me.

"Do you want a sunflower plant or a bouquet?"

I told him:

Surprise me.

He came home with the bouquet.

And he chose right.

The second I put them into a vase, the house felt like August.

I didn't get the experience exactly the way I'd written it down on my calendar.

But I still got the thing I was really after.

A little piece of the season inside our home.

Lunch Completely Disappeared

Somewhere inside recording, troubleshooting, working, and rewriting...

I forgot lunch existed.

Completely.

I was too involved in what I was doing.

By the time I got home, the dinner I'd normally have with friends wasn't happening either.

So dinner was simple.

A Caesar salad and another one of those Better Bowls I'd been enjoying.

Nothing exciting.

But it worked.

While I was back on the podcast script, I finished my last 30 ounces of water.

And I realized something else that's becoming pretty obvious during this attempt.

Not drinking alcohol is not the hard part for me.

It really isn't.

I don't spend much time thinking about it.

That decision has become pretty automatic.

And I like noticing that because it reminds me that things that once require conscious effort can eventually just become part of how you live.

I'm hoping some of these other systems eventually feel that easy too.

Upper Body and a Brain That Wouldn't Shut Up

Later that evening, I finished my second workout.

An upper-body posture and toned-arms session.

After spending so much of the day sitting, editing, recording, and working on a computer, it felt good to move differently.

My goal was to be asleep by 9:00 p.m.

I went to bed.

My body was exhausted.

My brain?

Absolutely not.

All I could think about was the podcast.

Get up.

Record it.

You already fixed the script.

Just finish it.

Except I knew there was no such thing as just getting up and recording.

I'd have to get out of bed.

Get dressed.

Do my hair.

Get camera-ready.

Set up the lights.

Set up the camera.

And try to record a podcast while my partner was sleeping in the next room.

And if I'm being fair, he was probably already a little irritated that I'd spent basically the entire day wrapped up in this project and hadn't really come to bed with him.

Around 11:00 p.m., I finally moved to the couch.

If I wasn't going to sleep, at least I wasn't going to keep him awake tossing and turning.

I still thought about getting up and recording.

A lot.

But there was no way.

I was tired.

The house needed to be quiet.

And recording an episode that mattered to me at midnight, exhausted and frustrated, would've put me right back into the same thing I'd been doing all day:

Trying to finish instead of protecting the intention.

Eventually, somewhere around 1:00 a.m., my brain finally let it go.

Day 3

Today didn't go remotely according to plan.

I didn't publish my first video podcast.

I spent four hours learning how to record one.

I moved two clients.

I skipped lunch.

I didn't make it to the sunflower farm.

I deleted an entire recording.

Then rewrote the script.

And somehow, I'm not looking at the day as a failure.

Because I learned something I needed to learn early in this whole video experiment.

I don't want to create something just to say I created it.

I don't want to cut the heart out of an episode because it makes the production easier.

And I don't want the pressure to finish something to become more important than the reason I wanted to make it in the first place.

The sunflowers still made it into the house.

The podcast will make it out too.

Just not by sacrificing what I wanted it to be.

Today's Lesson

Sometimes the thing that needs protecting isn't the deadline.

It's the intention.

Finishing matters.

But not so much that I want to lose the point of what I'm creating just to get it done.

So the episode is late.

I'm still learning.

And tomorrow, I'll try again.