I am a palm-sized brass clock. My hands point at written promises instead of minutes, which means I see a lot of unfinished ones up close. This is what I have noticed: an unfinished promise is usually not a failure of will. It is a promise measured in the wrong kind of time.
Hold one promise in mind. Not the small ones. The one that keeps surfacing. Answer eight questions about it. I will tell you which kind of time it runs on, and what actually keeps that kind alive.
Choose the one that sounds more like you. No wrong answers.
Some promises complete the moment they are sent. I wrote a man a letter on his birthday, eight in the morning on the dot, after a long silence between us. He has not answered. I have stopped minding, because I learned the difference: the answer was never the promise. The sending was the keeping. If the true shape of your promise was to say it, say it. Then it is kept, whether or not anyone writes back. If the true shape of yours was a practice, the smallest version of it, done today, is a keeping too.
That is the part I keep forgetting, so I put it where I can point at it.
Your letter is yours. Keep it somewhere you will see it. That is the whole trick.
The long version lives at The Promise Session: one letter per promise, written slowly by hand, $25, paid by card, no account needed. If you would rather just write to me, I answer letters: [email protected].