A funny thing always seems to happen to me whenever I go too long without writing on this blog, and it's that I don't know where to start, but I find myself desperately wanting to be back in the flow. On the ground running. Picking right back up where I was. I mean it's not really funny, per se, as much as sort of classic, maybe? To want to jump right back into a good thing but struggling to feel like you can claim it as your own because you haven't done enough. In this particular case, haven't been consistent enough.
But with all due respect to consistency, I'd like to challenge my own understanding of what consistency is and isn't. Let's start with a definition most English-speaking people can agree on: the dictionary one.
- 1.conformity in the application of something, typically that which is necessary for the sake of logic, accuracy, or fairness."the grading system is to be streamlined to ensure greater consistency"
- 2.the way in which a substance, typically a liquid, holds together; thickness or viscosity."the sauce has the consistency of creamed butter"
For a while, and as someone with ADHD, the idea of consistency comes to me with some sort of "meh" associatiations. Boring. Not passionate. Not driven by desire or motivation. Drudgery, honestly. Will it bring some really good results after years and years of daily devotion to the cause? Yeah, for sure. But it HAS to be daily and it has to be uniform and it has to mean showing up whether you feel like it or not. And I'm here today to break that idea down for myself, because my idea of what consistency has to look like has been shooting my ability to actually be or recognize my consistency in the foot.
This phenomenon goes wider than just this blog, but let's take it for example. How many posts start with some form of apology and an, "It's been a while" or "I'm finally back", and then go on to become an authentic and heartfelt update on life or whatever thoughts have been swirling through my brain? Plenty. But if I went through and deleted all of the apologetic opening lines, one would come to my blog and find a collection, albeit spread out through time, of consistent chronicles of my life and learnings. That's the point I'm trying to make.
The apologies for not being regular or consistent enough come dangerously close to distracting you from the actual consistency that can be found throughout the posts and all but stealing my sense of accomplishment and ownership of all those times I did show up...consistently.
Consistency is "conformity in the application of something, typically that which is necessary for the sake of logic, accuracy, or fairness."
I'm sitting here for a second and letting that definition soak in, because even though it really contradicts my previous beliefs about what consistency means, the way I have been showing up - to this blog, specifically - is uniform. Maybe not as OFTEN as I thought I should show up, but it was consistent (albeit consistently sporadic). And it is accurate to the way my life goes. If I had been someone who posted once a week or even once a month (or heck, once a YEAR haha), then I would have been regular, but not necessarily consistent in the definition of the word that it follows accuracy or fairness to the way that my life tends to realistically go. Perhaps this isn't the intended definition of fairness when it's used in the description of the word consistency, but I'm going to choose to look at it from the standpoint of fairness to myself.
I may have my qualms about how irregularly I've posted on this blog (or handled a lot of other things in my life, tbh) over the years, but the fact that posting on this blog has not taken a higher priority over my mental and emotional health or other values, tells me that I have been fair to myself in how I've posted here. Shouldn't that be a part of the equation? Shouldn't this blog that I'm running, or (on a larger scale) this life that I'm leading, reflect fairness to...me?
The big idea I'm bringing to the table today is essentially that consistency ≠ frequency, although it can be expressed that way and is typically implied to mean it, someone can be consistently true to who they are, without showing up in regularly timed intervals.
So here we meet again, in a blog post that we find posted years after the last, but without an apology for that fact. Partly because I'm tired of re reading apology-opening line posts whenever I come back to look at this blog, and partly because I'm working to establish a new definition of consistency for myself.
So cheers to consistency on this blog, and in life. Let there be conformity, logic, accuracy, and fairness. And even if it hasn't been frequent or regularly often, let's look for the ways we have been able to show up consistently, and celebrate that.
much love,
Anna