Well I've been waking up at sunrise
I've been following the light across my room
I watch the night receive the room of my day
Some people say the sky is just the sky
But I say
Why deny the obvious child?
-Paul Simon, The Obvious Child

Background/Preamble
I have been mourning my father for a fortnight. It would be more poetic to say he’s been in the ground for however long, but also untrue. His body is still at the Office of the Medical Investigator (OMI), awaiting transport to his unattended cremation, which was the most affordable way to take care of his remains, and also in accordance with his wishes. (I, for the record, whenever the time comes, want the tree, though it looks like they mostly do this with cremated remains and are figuring out how to effectively do it with a whole body. I’m not a botanist, but ecologically it really feels like it would be more effective with the whole body of nutrients to work with. I also personally have always been metaphysically terrified of cremation for myself, which is one of many reasons that despite seeming philosophical alignment, I would in practice be a terrible Hindu.) Of course, neither he, my mother, nor I particularly believe(d) that much significance remains with the body beyond a sentimental attachment to our earthly vessel. As Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) sang in a song I considered playing at his wake, Lord, my body / has been a good friend / but I won’t need it / when I reach the end.

Yusuf Islam outlived my father. That is a staggering fact. It’s not that surprising of course; he’s all of 34 days older than my dad. My dad’s admiration for him was of a relatable peer, not an elder figure. But it’s one of the many things that occur to me as I confront the staggering reality that the world is continuing while my father does not.

Which brings me to the inspiration for this project. I need to start doing things. To continue. As my wife Alex has hastened to point out, I have actually been doing lots of things. The house my father rebuilt and made so beautiful is many things, but it is neither finished nor in perfect repair. And for much of the last fortnight, it has felt urgent for me to find the time I can (usually early in the morning, before it hits 98 or 101 or 104) – between weeping and spending time with loved ones – to do maintenance on the house. My mother is 79 years old and handier than most, but she cannot replace my father’s abilities and diligence on this. For that matter, neither can I (43), but I have left my comfort zone a good deal in the last week especially to clean and paint, move mulch and secure gates, move tiles and sweep debris, all in the interests of making this place a more livable space for my mother to continue. To grieve, but continue.

I also need to write more. I feel like about 50% of the content of this blog has been apologies and explanations for why I’ve stopped updating it. This is not atypical of blogging as a method in general (especially in the age of social media) or internet projects even more broadly, but it is something I need to break free from. And most of the people who know me best have been encouraging me to write more as a way of working through my grief. This is both obvious and insightful, an important encouragement for me to act on. But without some sort of specific guidelines, I am too likely to just rewrite his eulogy over and over and over again. And while that’s a way of honoring my dad, it’s not the best way. His life was diverse and multifaceted and full of change, and the best way to write my way through losing him is in a way that embraces the adventures he managed to make out of life.

So:

The Project
Do one thing a day. Then write about it.

It’s pretty much that simple, though the rules below will elaborate much further. The elegance of One Thing is that it’s manageable. We are all incredibly pressed for time and I in particular was feeling especially strained by all my life obligations just before the earthquake of my dad’s sudden death. In feeling and falling behind, we are tempted to craft giant to-do lists of things to achieve this day, or this weekend, or this month, to try to catch up on everything all at once. And I’m good for a manic day here and there of nothing but tasks and checkmarks. But with full-time work, a wife, a toddler, home ownership, friends, fading aspirations of being A Writer, the need to maintain and redouble my investment in health and exercise, and everything else that piles up, doing it all at once is unrealistic. And I, as someone both driven and burdened by guilt and shame, teeter on the edge of being motivated and overwhelmed by the undone to-dos.

But I can do one thing a day. Or most days. And perhaps that will, over time, with full reflection and documentation, feel like momentum. You might even call it a movement.

The Rules

0. There are rules because I like rules. Also, famously, constraints and parameters are somewhat unexpectedly boons for creativity. See also Dinosaur Comics.

1. The One Thing has to be something out of the ordinary. It cannot be part of a regular routine or chore cycle or practice. It can start something that will become ordinary, or restart something that has been ordinary, but it must itself be at least somewhat new.

2. The One Thing can be of any size. It is not realistic or practical to expect a monumental thing every day and that would be debilitating and sink the whole project.

3. The One Thing should generally, overall, be in service or regarding other people in some way. This can be very liberally interpreted, and can include the memory of someone dead (this project is so much derived from and about my father’s death, at least at this inception point). And not every thing has to be about others. But it would be a mistake for most of these things to be self-regarding or self-referential. The idea is to have this be a push out into the world.

4. It is fine and even encouraged for the One Thing to be done exclusively to fulfill the desire or compulsion to do One Thing. This is a spur, not some sort of delusion that I have always been doing enough.

5. No apologies. The goal or ideal is to do One Thing every day, but this is not to be followed rigidly or obsessively, because that will sink the project early. No time will be wasted explaining why days were missed in the event that they were. Every day is a new day to potentially do One Thing.

6. There will be a blog post written about the One Thing every day. Ideally on the day that the One Thing is completed, but the routine may end up being the next day.

7. The purpose of the writing is manifold, but foremost to hold me accountable to doing the One Thing.

8. The writing itself should go beyond mere service to the project, however, and each post should ideally be a standalone piece of quality and interest that happens to be inspired by the One Thing. Therefore, while these will manifest as a series best understood through the project, they should all also be pieces that start with a brief explanation of the One Thing as a conduit to larger reflections on life, meaning, people, purpose, and all the good things I have always tried to write about.

9. The writing will be shared on the big three social media platforms where I have a presence (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) both to facilitate accountability and hopefully develop an ongoing following for my writing. Hashtag #OneThing. Ideally, this will expand my audience, but the project will still be a success if it doesn’t.

10. The One Thing should not take precedence over any of the numerous vital life obligations which are ongoing, which in rough order are being a good human, father, husband, son, friend, co-worker, and neighbor. Ideally this project will facilitate improvement in all of those roles, as the examined and intentional life is meant to do, but when in conflict, the One Thing is less important.

11. That said, the One Thing can and should be used as a preceding obligation to numerous kinds of fun and rest (especially unshared, solo fun/rest, see potential conflict with obligations above). This is a dangerous and controversial proposition, because a lifelong struggle for me has been the feeling that I need to “earn” rest or fun. However, I maintain that I haven’t developed a good alternative to this self-motivating structure, that this structure is unhealthy if unexamined and left unchecked but can be healthy in limited self-aware doses, and that I would be dead in a gutter long ago if I abandoned this structure altogether. Also, crucially, this structure enables me to feel unfettered in my fun and rest where possible: i.e. if I decide to play video games after doing all my life obligations and doing and writing about my One Thing, I will feel truly relaxed and able to enjoy myself in a way that I find very difficult without this structure. And rest and fun are most restorative when they feel unbridled and “earned” in this way. For me. For now. Your mileage may vary, reader beware.

12. One post per One Thing, probably, mostly. Occasional recap/wraps may be necessary depending on rhythm and quality of writing. However, as these are likely to not fulfill rule 8, they are to be minimized and only utilized when necessary to maintain the sense of integrity of the overall project. Realistically, more time will be spent writing about the One Thing than doing the One Thing and that is both okay and expected.

13. Any of these rules can be amended, deleted, or additional rules created, as serves the project. These are guideposts, not a strait jacket. And it is objectively hard to predict the best parameters for a new journey at its outset. I am extraordinarily aware of my lifelong tendency to grandiosely announce new projects that fizzle in days, weeks, or months. “Another Chapter One,” my father coined as a totemic phrase for this phenomenon early in my youth. But some of these projects last years, even decades. I have been blogging for 23 years and am still finding ways to reinvent the effort. Some of them even come to completion: I have finished many books after so many chapter ones of my younger years. If most of my success stories revolve around writing, then so much the better.

14. Feel free to steal this idea for yourself, in whatever way it manifests. I don’t think I have heard about this idea, exactly, but I think it may be a compilation of notions that have been floating and burbling around from online communities and others for a long time. I almost never feel anything proprietary about my ideas. If they have use, it would be wonderful if they’re more widely useful. I am always trying to write my way from the alien isolation I so frequently feel (e.g. the Blue Pyramid) to the universal connection we all crave.