My wife and I recently started looking for our first house.

Very early on in the search, I was sure we had found the one.  Emily, on the other hand, wanted to keep looking.  I immediately got stressed out about possibly missing the opportunity.

The city we live in has turned into a hot real-estate market in the last 5 years with a real scarcity of homes for sale compared to the number of people hoping to buy.  As the days ticked past, my stomach started feeling more and more nervous, my poops got bad (which ALWAYS freaking happens when I’m stressed out about something), and I started to revive the untrue story I have in my head about Emily never making decisions quickly or being able to jump on rare opportunities.

It was just getting worse and worse until I finally realized something:

When things get tense like that, you can play a card (like the Guilt Card or the You’re-Ruining-This-For-Us Card) and pressure your partner.  But in the end, it’s not the house that really, truly has to work.  It’s your marriage that has to work.

The tense moments are an opportunity to get good at making hard decisions together.  But you need something serious like a house to make the exercise matter.  Because if what’s at stake is which throw-pillow to buy for our futon and I couldn’t care less, then there’s no exercise there.  There’s no growth.

My poops went back to normal when I was able to tell myself:

Alright man, don’t make the ultimate goal a certain house.  Make the ultimate goal that the process went well, that you learned about each other, and that you’ll be in better position to make an important decision next time.  Optimize around those outcomes and you’ll end up with a good house anyway.  And someone who still likes you enough to live in the house with you.

I’m slow.

I always have been and I imagine I always will be.  It takes me a long time to brainstorm, to reflect, to write.  I’m not a fast reader, I don’t pick up new skills very quickly, and washing dishes takes me at least twice as long as it does for my wife.  (But that’s mostly okay with me…  Dishes are meditative somehow.)

It’s been my tendency for a very long time now NOT to start anything unless the day’s landscape offers me at least 1 uninterrupted hour to get into it deeply.  Get a rhythm going.

And that’s great for some things.  It’s probably best not to rearrange your home office until you’ve got at least a whole free afternoon.

But what I’ve *just* realized very recently is this: For the majority of things I really want to do in my life, they’re going to happen 25 minutes at a time or they just aren’t gonna happen at all.

If I’m waiting for 1 hour of open headspace, this blog post doesn’t happen and I never get back into woodworking and the books I want to read stay closed until I’ve maxed out the number of renewals allowed at the public library (again?!  Gahdamnit!!)

Fact: All the things I really want to reach will draw nearer by 25 minutes.

Or they won’t.

This leads to 2 really crucial conclusions:

Conclusion #1

It’s time to stop kidding myself about what it means to watch 7 stupid Youtube videos in a row or to read the first 4 pages of Reddit.  If I really want to do that, then fine.  But I’ve got to be honest that it’s not all just “Oh my brain is tired and dinner’s ready in less than half an hour anyway…  Yahoo homepage it is!”

What’s really happening in that moment is that I’m deciding not to move forward on any of the things I tell myself really matter.

(I had an idea once for an iPhone app that blocks your access to bullshit websites unless you type in: “Yay I don’t really care about my goals that much!”  If someone with some programming chops wants to get on that, I’d buy that on the app store.  I’d even rate it.)

Conclusion #2

I’ve got to help myself out.  I need the library book to be on the coffee table, not in the trunk of the car.  I need to have a running list of blog post ideas already in Evernote so that I can just pick one and start drafting.  I need to have the ukulele already in tune so that I can practice an actual song instead of practicing tuning again.

If the good thing isn’t AT LEAST as easy to get going as “Slide to unlock” -> Facebook App, then it’s NEVER going to happen.

And really, I’d rather that they happen.  I’m not so sure I’ll get another shot at all of this — Life.  And all.