You only have to reach bedtime

Look at how far you are trying to see. It is early, you feel like this, and your mind has already run the tape forward through the rest of the week, the rest of the month, the rest of a life that has to be lived without the one thing that used to smooth it over. No wonder you cannot stand up under that. Nobody could. You are not tired from today. You are tired from a distance nobody is asking you to cross, picked up all at once, before breakfast.

So cut the horizon down to something honest. The only finish line today is bedtime. Not a good day. Not a productive one. Not a day you would describe well to anybody. Just the moment tonight when you lie down still free. Everything between here and there is the entire assignment, and everything past there belongs to somebody else. You are not in charge of Thursday. Thursday gets a different version of you, one who has slept, and that version is not your problem right now.

And here is the part worth resting on. The day ends whether or not you handle it well. You do not have to earn the ending. Nothing has to be finished for the light to go and the hour to arrive. Time does the closing for you, with no excellence required on your part, which makes bedtime the one goal today that literally cannot be missed. You are not chasing it. It is coming toward you. All you have to do is not smoke while it does.

So hand everything else to the rested version of you. The call you owe, the mess in the kitchen, the question about whether you are doing any of this right. Those belong to tomorrow, and tomorrow will have more of you in it. Tonight the job is small enough to hold. Get to the pillow. Thank God that the day has a floor built into it and the floor is called sleep. Then close it out. You did not have to be strong today. You only had to reach the end of it, and here you are.