Yesterday I didn’t post for the first time in 128 days. I still showed up to teach my class on creative entrepreneurship, I still engaged with creative community, but I didn’t post my own work.
And yet writing again today feels like slipping back into the beat of a rhythm that never stopped.
When we miss a beat, we have the opportunity to start again at each interval if we've set a cadence.
The purpose of daily practice isn’t to establish rigid dogma. There is no virtue in gapless streaks. The person who has shown up every day but one at gym for a year is no less fit than their friend who never ever misses a day. The old woman who never missed a day of meditation no more spiritually fit than her sister who missed a day for her daughter's graduation.
Yet there is virtue in ritual. In setting sacred containers in out lives for the practices that connect us to higher purpose. And there is also virtue in flexibility, in responsiveness, in awareness and adaptation to the needs of our lives.
The intervals we choose to reinforce have a profound impact when ritual practice slips. Cadence is a combination of interval and momentum. Set a strong cadence, and the next beat will sweep you back into the practice. The momentum will carry you if there is a fundamental consistency across a long enough time frame.
Daily intervals allow for slips of a day every few months without losing momentum. Weekly intervals require much longer to establish the same momentum. If you only create when you feel like, what’s your cadence?
How long does it take to develop a rhythmic momentum that beats inside you, calling you back to the dance when you rest?
Do it everyday until you feel it in your bones. Until you hear the call when you awaken. Until you go to sleep with the song still on your lips. Until you hum your melody under your breath. Until you forget there was a goal and you find your hands at the altar of your work on their own.
Now is the moment to listen. Do you hear your rhythm? Let it carry you, onwards.