I lost fifteen kilograms in six months. I was quite resolved. That is how I usually start on a grand scale. I get the right tools, take it on, and log progress in detail every day. Yet in about five years, much of the weight had come back.
Oddly, I have been keeping a diary for about ten years. I cannot remember what set it off. Leather planners, ordinary notebooks, apps, GitHub. I changed where I write many times, and each time I stopped reading old entries. Some days two lines are enough; some days I write about the day before yesterday. As habits go, it does not look very polished.
Even so, continuing like this, I began looking for words in the back of my mind no matter what I was doing. Joy and confusion alike—I poke at them asking what is going on. Even without a notebook, I could no longer leave things vague.
The weight loss I started with such resolve became an accomplishment I remember. The diary I kept awkwardly became not a stack of notebooks but a disposition to put things into words. What was changing me was inertia.