The day you skip

There will be a day when you don't do it. Not because you didn't want to, but because it simply didn't happen. Evening came, and the pen stayed where it was.

In most places online you get something back for that. A counter dropping to zero. A little flame going out. A message telling you that you've lost something you built up with effort. I have deliberately not built that here — there is nothing you can break.

That is not carelessness but the whole point. The moment there is something to lose, drawing becomes an obligation. And obligations get skipped more often in the end, not less. The guilt you feel about missing a day only raises the doorstep for coming back.

So here is what happens when you miss a day: nothing. Tomorrow's prompt is simply there, the same one as for everyone else. You pick it up as if nothing came between, because nothing did.

I skip days too. Sometimes two, sometimes a whole week in summer. What I have learned is that coming back gets easier the less there is at stake. So here, nothing is at stake.