You Won’t Remember Today

So you may as well do the right thing.

It was a shameless brag, but I didn’t care. I had to tell someone.

As soon as I saw the number rollover, I ran into my writing Slack group.

“SIXTY. THOUSAND. FOLLOWERS.”

I shouldn’t have been bragging, really. The milestone came a full 18 months after I hit 59,000. Let me say that once more so you don’t miss it — I gained 59,000 followers in 2 years. Then, it took me almost another 2 years to gain the next 1,000.

What happened?

Looking back, it’s a blur. One minute I was famous. My inbox and notifications were full. Then, a few close friends died. Then, I got frustrated with Medium’s new algorithm. I began to flirt with other platforms. I didn’t see the progress I wanted. I fell down a spiral of doubt and fear and pointless follower chasing. I tried to learn other skills. Maybe they would save my self-esteem.

This is what I know for sure: at the beginning of 2018, writing was as easy as breathing. By the end of the year, my fingers turned to stone. The process was hard again.

After a relatively easy 27 years on the planet, life got very hard.

I didn’t want anything hard anymore.

So I looked at my 59,000 followers and said “Goodbye.”

Once I’d sorted out a few demons and made peace with a tragedy or two, I returned to writing. By this time, people I knew personally made tens of thousands of dollars writing blog posts. I’d still made $0.

“You probably picked a bad time to decelerate,” said Ayodeji Awosika when we talked the other day.

Ayo is smart. That’s the nicest way he could have pointed out my obvious mistake.

It felt like it was too late to get back on board. How could I recapture the magic I once had? Would anyone care what I had to say? What if all my readers fell in love with Tom Kuegler. I can’t compete with Tom. He has perfect hair.

“How did I get 59,000 followers in the first place?” I wondered, hoping the answer would lead me forward.

I couldn’t come up with an answer because I didn’t remember.

Since this post has more numbers than usual, here’s another interesting one: 4,474. This is the number of days my wife and I have been a couple.

I don’t remember most of them. The memories bubble up and then sink back below the surface: a late phone call on a snowy night, a cozy couch and a hazy light, a front-porch kiss, a white dress; later — a cat, a dog, a car, a house, and Paris.

Each day had meaning at the time. Now they are all forgotten. I only remember what happened today.

What happened today is I made Kate’s favorite tea in her favorite mug. I made her breakfast and lunch. When she had a Zoom call with her boss, I took the dog out for a walk so he wouldn’t bark. I did not tell her a single lie. I asked how she is feeling about this whole virus mess. Once I wanted to pick a fight. I didn’t. I swear this happened while I was writing this post — she ran into the room and screamed: “Alexa, play dance music!” We danced.

Marriage doesn’t always go so well, but today it did.

She and I are getting along very well in quarantine. One reason for that is because I do what good partners do when there is not a global pandemic.

I take the actions I know will make us a better couple even though I won’t remember taking them.

It’s the same with the writing. If you’d asked me to name a single post I wrote before 2018, I could have only told you about one.

Do you know what I found alongside the 300 words that went viral? Hundreds of posts. Hundreds of thousands of words. Responses to readers. Clever headlines. Quippy turns of phrases. Tight paragraphs. I found honesty. Truth. Insight. I was a good writer once.

I don’t remember any of that.

You won’t remember today.

That seems absurd, doesn’t it? How could you forget what your eyes are looking at now? How could you forget that perfect egg salad sandwich you had for lunch? How could you forget that funny video you saw?

You will forget. Despite your best intentions, you will forget almost everything.

There are two ways to read that last sentence. You can read it through a lens of futility or a lens of hope.

Choose hope.

Chose today. Today can be the day that changes your life for the better. You can make sacrifices. You can become 1% better than you were yesterday. You can write the first sentence of the first chapter of the first book that becomes a pillar in your career.

You can do the hard work that comes with building a better future self. Better still, you can do it with absolute confidence that two days from now, all memory of that pain will vanish. All that remains will be the results of those agonizing hours.

Do the hard work today. Do it now. Do the things you think you are incapable of. Try. Fail.

Feel the sting of falling short, and then try again tomorrow.

You won’t remember it anyway.

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