Embracing the Sometimes
If you’re anything like me, you sometimes (often) find yourself practicing your trapeze skills. You’ve perfected your form over the years, swinging back and forth between the opposite ends of the effort spectrum, landing gracefully at “all” only to swing back towards “nothing” later on. There is no in-between for us acrobats who live in the throes of this constant pendulum swing.
Fellow trapeze artists, take your final bow, because it’s time for us to learn to walk the balance beam.
If you haven’t guessed it already, no, I’m not adept on the trapeze, and no, I won’t be writing about the circus. Instead, I hope to take us on a journey, or perhaps even just a few steps, away from the lie of all-or-nothing and towards the greater grace of sometimes.
It’s easy to live like we are trapped on one or both sides of this all-or-nothing spectrum. This is especially true when we feel like the things we do in life are only legitimate if they last forever and are always consistent. For instance, if we’re reading, it only counts if we do it an hour a day; or if we’re working out, it has to be happening six days a week. Anything less wouldn’t be enough to feel valid. But more often than not, these lofty swings only land us back on the “nothing” side when we miss a day… or two… or maybe six. Because we haven’t just failed, but we ourselves are the failure. Living the all-or-nothing lie means believing that if we can’t do it all, it’s better to do nothing. At least that way we won’t keep becoming failure embodied.
A bit dramatic? Perhaps. But I feel like we’ve all been there. In my life, this pattern can show up in my habit (or lack thereof) writing. I have this picture in my mind of what I want my writing life to look like: I wake up early enough each morning to write for an hour with a matcha latte by my side, showing up for myself and honing this craft I love. In all honestly, this dream has happened a grand total of two or three times over the years. Typically I write pretty sporadically and only when inspiration hits.
I don’t want this to always be the case. I want to be disciplined and create a practical routine for myself, because showing up with intention in spaces we want to nurture and cultivate is important. But over this period of starting and failing to maintain this and other grand hopes of habits I want to have, I’ve begun to wonder – what if doing something sometimes is good enough?
What if showing up every now and then was good enough, at least for now? What if momentum is built through slow changes overtime rather than in one great, gratifying instant?
I believe that these questions point to a core defect in how we tend to think. Too often our focus is on what we want to do, not who we want to become.
If we are action-oriented, looking what we want to do with our time, we might sound something like, “I’m going to do this hobby activity X times a week.” Or “I’ll practice this language on Duolingo for X minutes every day.” If you’ve set goals like this for yourself and have followed through on them every time, I feel like you’re in the minority and your brain should be studied for science. More likely, you’ve made these promises and found yourself a few days or weeks in, feeling disappointed in your imperfect follow through. What was supposed to be a year of becoming fluent in Italian turned missing practice for a few days, then weeks, and ultimately giving up completely.
Enter, the balance beam.
What if we didn’t have to feed into this all-or-nothing narrative? What if there was another, more balanced approach?
I give you, The Sometimes Method.
In The Sometimes Method, sometimes you follow through and sometimes you don’t. But in it all, you are making micro-movements towards the kind of person you want to become. No perfection required. Missed days welcome. The only requirement is that you focus on who you want to be rather than what you want to do.
Do I write as often as I would like to? No. But I write more frequently and thoughtfully than I did even a year ago because I have shown up irregularly, imperfectly, and inconsistently. In this ‘sometimes’ space I have made progress towards the kind of writer I would like to someday become.
It took was a shift in my mindset from “I am failing at this goal, thus I am a failure, and so I may as well stop here,” to “I’m bummed that I’m not following through, but I’m thankful for the times I have. I know that each time I choose to do X, it builds momentum for the next time.”
You too can embrace this more balanced, in-between Sometimes Method way of life. You have permission to let go of the dizzying back and forth and rest in the middle.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t aim for consistency. If that’s something that is right and healthy for you, I encourage you to find your regular rhythm. I have so much respect and admiration for healthy and value-driven discipline.
But if you find yourself focusing on actions rather than identity, take a minute to think about who you want to become. Because if your focus is on the kind of person you want to be, any small action is good enough.
So, friend, I invite you to join in this Sometimes Method movement. Here, we are imperfect, but trying; flawed, but committed; in process and focused on taking our time to grow deep, value-laden roots that will grow us into who we hope to become, one sometimes at a time.
