keeping promises to myself
An informal, unedited piece.
This month in Thailand:
I wake at 5. Spend the early hours writing in the enclosed garden of my airbnb with a coffee, lit by a thin crescent moon and a string of glowing incandescent patio lights. The raw black sky dissolves into a rich indigo as birds high in the treetops start their hoops and hollers and small lizards dart around the white stucco walls looking for breakfast.
It’s peaceful.
At 7:30 I bike to the gym on a quiet backroad, passing a pasture of cows. Close enough to the ocean to smell salt in the breeze. The locals always smile. 7:45 is a HIIT workout. Assault bikes, rowing, kettlebell swings, burpees. I get an espresso from a nearby cafe and write a bit more before CrossFit at 9:30. I’ve made fun of CrossFit for as long as I can remember. I still get the names mixed up—snatches and cleans and jerks—but it’s a solid workout.
People at the gym are friendly. Coming here from every corner of the world, but all alike in exhaustion. Exercise is a great equalizer.
After yoga/stretching, a sauna and ice bath, I bike home. Shower, write some more, eat by 1. Spend my afternoons reading the New Testament, going for photography walks, meeting friends.
The days are long, but the month has been short.
It’s crazy that I’ve wanted this for so long and now I finally have it: an intentionally blank calendar to just read and write and live with slowness. A part of me thought it would never happen. I feel like I’ve spent the past half-decade spread thin, stretched, “like butter scraped over too much bread”. Chronically overscheduled, saying yes out of obligation, afraid of missing out. People always wanted pieces of me.
I was paralyzed by the realization that I was making choices that were taking me further away from who I wanted to be. That I’d keep taking on more, because I was terrified of less. Terrified of meeting who I was, once I stopped doing a million things at once.
For years I did this: routinely delaying my ideal lifestyle for something else I want that felt more urgent. Waiting for my real life to begin. I had to confront the truth that if I seek to live a simpler life, I have to start simplifying today.
It wasn’t easy. The world is not conducive to focus. Reduction isn’t intuitive or encouraged. It involves disappointing people.
I think about this quote from Glennon Doyle almost daily:
Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.
But when I make and keep promises to myself, when I live out my priorities, I feel more whole, more alive, more human. I trust myself more. I show myself that I can have agency. I can decisively shape my life into something that works for me, something I love. And that the courageous step is closer than I could ever imagine and simpler than I had thought.
I preferred the horizon to be safely in the distance.
Learning to listen to myself has taken time. Learning to keep promises to myself has taken even longer.
But I’m trying so hard to not disappoint the dreamer in me. The part with the imagination and idealism of a child, who just wants his life to be a work of art.
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👋 what i’ve been up to:
I wrote this piece last Sunday because early Monday I caught a flight to Ko Samui, a tiny island off the east coast of Thailand, for a 7-day silent meditation retreat at the Dipabhāvan Meditation Center. So I guess I’ve been meditating all week?
A meditation retreat is something I’ve wanted to do since March 2023 and I’m glad I kept the promise to myself. It’ll be challenging but I’m excited. Even if I don’t meditate, being completely unplugged will be worthwhile.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Writer and philosopher Robert Pirsig on finding the right pace:
“Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible, and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.”
📸 photo i took:
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You got all my love,
Tommy
So essential. I yearn to write with this level of compression Tommy.
“when I make and keep promises to myself, when I live out my priorities, I feel more whole, more alive, more human.”
I could pick ten more perspectives but this one is a North Star.
I hope your retreat was amazing.
The more "selfish" you get with your needs the better your writing becomes. The Glennon Doyle quote is good, but you're a good example of this other side of the equation, how the willingness to disappoint others in the short term is the only way to actually serve others in the long term. Without being grounded in one's self/purpose we can't ultimately meet the deep needs of others. I like "exercise is the great equalizer" - bringing us down to the same common denominator of needing to do the work to make progress. And self-awareness is the great liberator—delivering each of us to our true path, hidden strengths and unique purpose. I don't see how investing in it could ever be selfish.