For Every Wednesday, There’s a Thursday

Wednesday was a pretty rotten day, all things considered. Between the clogged sink and the water all over the floor from the dishwasher, I had plenty of reasons to be bummed. It had been a long day at work, and I was just totally burned out by the time I went to bed.

But then Thursday came, and things got better. The sink got fixed. Our order of pellets (which hadn’t come on Wednesday as scheduled) arrived. And getting them put away in the garage proved much easier than I’d feared. The projector had arrived, and I’d worried about whether or not I’d be able to install it where I wanted. Basically, every time a day like Wednesday comes around, you start to question whether anything will be simple and straightforward again. It just feels like you’re snake bit.

But the projector went up without a hitch. The mount I’d bought worked well. The positioning is great. The screen size is 110 inches, a bit smaller than the 120″ I’d hoped for, but once we had it up on the wall, we decided not to zoom it to the maximum dimensions. The room isn’t deep enough to make watching a movie at that size comfortable on the eyes. But as I was watching The Princess Bride to test things out, I was just so happy. The plan was working! Things were coming together!

I’ve now got the screen ordered, the speaker stands arrived today, and I’ll be getting wiring and cables today or tomorrow. I’m on track for a Groundhog Day screening of epic proportions.

So anyway. It was just such a contrast in days. One day everything seemed to go wrong. The next day, everything seemed to go right. As I thought about it, I saw a lot of parallels in the feeling I have when I’m writing. Some days it feels like everything I’m writing is garbage. Some days it all feels perfect. But when I read it all over after the fact, months or years later? It all looks the same.

It doesn’t take much to give flavor to a day. Have a few things blow up in your face, and you feel like a total failure. Have a few things go just right, and you’re on top of the world. But most days are full of things just going normal. You remember the outliers and use them to evaluate how everything else went. It helps to take a step back and remind yourself of that.

And on that note, have a lovely weekend. I’m going to be running speaker wire!