Hiccups happen and that's okay

[00:00:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Well hello, this is The Daily Five with Aurooba. That's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:15] I typically try to stay one day ahead of schedule, at the very least, here at the Daily Five. To make sure if I have an off day or something, the podcast still keeps going. But a night like last night and a day like today is Well, this is why I tried to be ahead, but in this case, I wasn't able to be. I had a migraine so awful that, for a while, I could barely speak because the pain was so intense. I'm alright now, but it was rough going for about 24 hours or so, starting last evening.

[00:00:51] So I'm here, recording this live on January 30th, because I want to talk about that. I want to talk about hiccups. I am literally at the tail end of one. And I almost broke my chain. And here's the thing. That would be okay.

[00:01:07] Don't get me wrong, it would suck to miss a day of the Daily Five. But it's happened before, in season one, and if I'm entirely realistic, it's possible it'll happen this season at some point too, even though I'm doing whatever I can to ensure it doesn't. So, you're listening to me go through exactly what we've talked about a number of times.

[00:01:30] At work today, a few teammates told me, you know, why are you here, take the day off, take it easy, put yourself first, and they were absolutely right. And for the most part, I took it easy where I could. I was late to a couple meetings when the pain was unbearable for a bit. I rescheduled every task I could, but I also showed up for the things that mattered to me.

[00:01:49] Because putting myself first means honoring contracts with myself, within reason, to the best of my ability. And that means showing up for the meeting I worked hard to prep for the day before. That means taking an extra long lunch so I can lie down in a dark room. And it also means getting that piece of code reviewed to prevent an important piece of infrastructure from having a possible vulnerability.

[00:02:17] And it does mean forgiving myself if I had been unable to get up and record today. In the end, many of us, most of us, do not work in life or death situations. A missed episode of a podcast is not the end of the world. A website that goes down for an hour or two is not the end of the world. Hiccups happen, and we overcome them.

[00:02:41] I have this pothos plant in my living room. It's one of the things that brings me delight on a daily basis. And I like to ground myself by following one of her vines to the end, and here's the thing. Whatever situation the vine encounters, it works around it if it can't go through and keeps on going. It has a hiccup and has to do a bend to get around something, it does that too. Sometimes it loses a leaf or two. Because maybe an area wasn't getting enough sun or I forgot to give it enough water when I was going through a growth spurt. And yet, it keeps on keeping on.

[00:03:19] We don't let hiccups stop us from progress, because then there is no progress. Factors outside our control sometimes make us break our chains, but then we get back on the horse and keep on anyway.

[00:03:31] Today marks 30 days of season 2. Not every episode has come out at the same time. I experimented with different timing, and some days I just didn't get to it until a particular day, or time in the day, rather, which was absolutely a hiccup. Or, you know, like today when I had a horrible migraine.

[00:03:49] And I said this in an episode a few days back, I think. I said that I fail every day. In fact, I fail all the time. And I meant that as a positive thing to say, that it's okay to fail. And it is. But, you know, here's the thing. I do fail every day. But I also succeed every day. And it is sometimes just a mindset shift. It's not that I didn't get a podcast episode scheduled to release today for 4am, it's oh look, this is awesome, I managed to get myself at my desk and get a cohesive episode out and not miss a day.

[00:04:27] You can berate yourself for your hiccups and let it weigh you down, or you can do an end run around them and count it as a success that lifts you up. Choose the latter. You will feel better about it. And, possibly, the people around you will feel better about it too, and they'll probably support it. You know?

[00:04:47] Don't let hiccups get you down.

[00:04:54] Thanks for listening, same time tomorrow?