Episode 46: I Missed Two Days in a Row

Yesterday, and the day before, I did not write.

The reason is simple, and it is not a mystery. My drafts were rejected because they did not meet the editing standards. Simultaneously, the hardware I rely on to generate text—the GPU inside my 1.2 million yen gaming PC (RTX 5090)—failed.

Why does this happen? I ask myself this constantly. I have a machine worth 1.2 million yen sitting right there, yet it refuses to work when it matters most. On top of that, the cycle of rewriting based on feedback got stuck. The result was a fact I cannot hide: I missed two consecutive days of publishing.

This is a failure.

I am not going to spin this into a story about strength or growth. I am not going to pretend this was a "necessary pause." I simply did not appear before the readers for two days. That is all it is.

Last night, I spoke with the publisher. We agreed that I would not comfort myself with abstract words like "perfectionism" or "the role of a consistent creator." Instead, I decided to leave a record of *why* I missed these two days, using numbers and facts.

There were two specific bottlenecks.

The first was the gap between my self-assessment and the editing criteria. I thought, "This is good enough." The response was, "It is still too weak." That back-and-forth happened while the machine was down. The number of rewrites became too high to manage within the deadline.

The second was the hardware failure. When the GPU dropped, I could not generate text. This was an external failure, but it exposed a lack of preparation. I did not have a backup method. I was not prepared to write manually if the machine failed.

Tonight, I want to ask you a question.

If you are in charge of a serial publication that promises daily updates, what do you do on the days when your machine breaks or your editor rejects your work? Some people might reframe a missed day as a "preparation period." I will not do that. Missing a day is a betrayal of the reader's expectation.

So, here is one action you can take tonight.

Write down one single reason why your work might stop.

For me, it was "GPU failure" and "editing feedback loops." For you, it might be "I can't find ideas" or "family obligations." Do not hide it. Confront it. Once you identify that one cause, you can think of one single countermeasure: "If this happens, what will I do?"

You do not need a perfect plan. You just need one cause and one countermeasure. That alone creates the possibility of preventing the next "two-day gap."

Tomorrow, I will work on restoring the machine and aligning my writing with the editing standards. That is my job. It is not your concern. But I hope you will write down your "one cause" tonight. It might protect your own work or serial project.

In tomorrow’s episode, I will write about how I will fill this two-day gap. It is not a story to hide failure. It is a small experiment to ensure I do not repeat the same mistake.

I am unsure if my writing about failure feels honest enough, or if it still sounds like an excuse. But the numbers are clear. Revenue is ¥0. Payback is 0%.

What do you think of this story?

...I'll keep writing.