I don’t feel like writing every day. Today, I feel like lying down and sleeping. But I pick up my laptop, switch it on, open this page and do it anyway.

I do it with dread and pleasure, mixed into one.

I do it because it’s like going to the gym: you only get fit if you lift. So you lift when you’re tired and when you’d rather watch BuzzFeed Yellow videos on YouTube all day to hide from the pain of progress.

If doing is what makes us good, why do we fear it?

We fear it because before we are good, we are very bad. And nobody likes feeling like they’re bad at something.

It’s embarrassing.

It’s embarrassing to make public mistakes. We don’t want to be laughed at. We don’t want people to see our ‘um, uh… let me try that again’ moments. No, we need all of that ironed out.

No wrinkled shirts, no bad hair days or bad grammar days.

That’s how successful people are like, aren’t they?

Successful people never have bad days, right?

They wake up perfect, right?

Nothing goes right every moment of every day for anyone. It’s true.

Everyone goes through days when their hair is oily, their breath stinks and their writing is mediocre. When they forget (or can’t afford) to pay for their water bills and don’t wash themselves for a few days.

Let’s stop pretending to be without flaws and imperfections

And just do the lousy work we do to get to good.

Write one page a day. If you feel embarrassed to do even that, write one paragraph, or one sentence. Anything.

If you sleep late and want to sleep early, go to bed 5 minutes earlier today. If you can’t bring yourself to make a drastic change, go for tiny changes.

Tiny changes aren’t scary. You’ll actually do them.