A Little Easier, Every Day

I’m a sucker for cartoons. Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, Archer—anything weird, slightly unhinged, and smarter than it first appears. They remind me, in a world that often demands we take everything seriously, that absurdity has its own kind of wisdom. But sometimes wisdom hits much harder than expected.

My favorite line from BoJack Horseman is from the Jogging Baboon:

“Every day it gets a little easier… But you gotta do it every day — that's the hard part. But it does get easier.”

He says it to encourage BoJack to keep running—as BoJack is sprawled out on a lawn, winded from a comically short jog. In a show that wrestles with addiction, depression, and the weight of being alive, the line feels less like advice and more like survival instructions.

That line gives me hope. It’s a reminder that forward movement doesn’t have to be heroic. It can just be stubborn. It can just be showing up. Even when I fall. Even when I don’t really want to. Especially then.

I’m someone who loves a good challenge—sometimes a little too much. I've scraped knees and bruised pride to show for it. But when I look back I realize I’m much farther ahead than I once was. Not because I sprinted. Not because I always succeeded. But because I kept moving.

I’ve failed more times than I care to count. But failure feels less like a defeat now and more like a field note: something you scribble down and carry with you to the next climb. I’m starting to care less about the summit and more about the hiking boots, the badly packed snacks, the wrong turns that led to better views. I’m now more interested in the process rather than the goal. There are only so many things in the universe that I can control, but what I can control is the decision on whether to start and whether to keep moving forward, day after day, learning from what works and what does not.

I can choose whether I take the first step.

I can choose whether I take the next one.

Doing it every day is still the hard part. But discovering who I’m becoming along the way makes it worth the while.