I don’t think I realised how much energy I was wasting starting over every day.
Not physically. Mentally.
Every morning had this quiet reset baked into it:
- “New day”
- “Fresh start”
- “Do better today”
And before that, even earlier, there was another version of it:
“The sun will come up tomorrow, and it won’t be nearly as bad as you think.”
That one served a purpose.
It was stabilising.
Something to hold onto when things felt like they were spiralling.
Where the reset came from
I think the reset started as a coping mechanism.
A way to:
- reduce overwhelm
- contain anxiety
- get through the day
If everything feels too big, you shrink the horizon:
- just get through today
- count your blessings
- take the small wins
I still do that.
I just call them micro-wins now.
Where it started to break
At some point, the reset stopped being stabilising… and started becoming expensive.
Not obviously.
But quietly, in the background.
Every day I was:
- rebuilding context
- reloading decisions
- reprocessing the same thoughts
Journaling helped—but in a particular way.
It became less about reflection and more about:
getting things out of my head when it wasn’t healthy to process them
Middle of the night thoughts.
Spinning ideas.
Stuff with no resolution.
Just… park it somewhere.
A different question
Somewhere along the line, the question changed.
Not:
“What should I do today?”
But:
“Where am I up to?”
That shift did two things:
- It stopped the daily reset
- It let me pick things up without rethinking everything
Even if it had been days. Even weeks.
Sometimes the note is literally:
“Mootards isn’t dead yet.”
And that’s enough.
Bad days look different now
“If it was a bad day” used to mean:
→ reset tomorrow
→ try again
→ do better
Now it’s closer to:
there’s no such thing as a wasted day
Even if the only thing I learn is:
- I needed to not think
- I needed to stop
- I had nothing in the tank
That’s still information.
The cycle I didn’t see
It wasn’t that I was ignoring reality.
It was that processing it cost too much.
Too many thoughts →
too much mental load →
exhaustion →
loss of momentum →
negative loops
So the reset helped break the loop.
But it also meant I never really carried anything forward.
What’s changed
Now it feels more like:
I don’t need to solve everything
I just need to not drop the thread
And when a day doesn’t move much?
“So what.”
That’s where the micro-wins come in.
The blessings to count.
Not as a coping mechanism—but as a way to recognise:
- something did happen
- something did move
- even if it was small
A subtle difference
Before:
- reset was about escaping the weight
- and sometimes blaming myself for not doing better
Now:
- carrying forward is about reducing that weight
- and removing the need to blame
Because I’m not starting again.
I’m continuing.
Journaling became something else
It’s not just reflection anymore.
It’s:
- offloading cognitive load
- capturing state
- leaving a trail
So I don’t have to hold everything in my head
or resolve it immediately
Final thought
I still believe this:
tomorrow is a new day
and it can be better
But I don’t think that requires a reset anymore.
It just means:
pick it up again
from wherever it actually is
— Epigrantitus (ongoing condition)