Day 8:
Because sometimes the plot twist is just… Texas heat.
Today was a cluster fuck.
Yes, I’m naming it. Claiming it. Blessing it, blogging it, and maybe cursing it a little.
It started sometime in the middle of the night, when I woke up drenched in sweat. In a “why is it 76 degrees in here when the thermostat says 69?” kind of way. I got up, checked to see if one of the kids had messed with it. Nope. Fan was on. Thermostat was holding the line. But the A/C? Not playing.
Texas summer is the villain origin story no one asked for.
I wasn’t about to troubleshoot a heatwave at 3 a.m., so I pulled the sheet up (the duvet was absolutely not invited) and tried to go back to sleep.
By the time I actually got up, it was 77 degrees and climbing. And if you’ve ever lived in Texas, you know that an A/C going out isn’t a quirky inconvenience—it’s a full-on emergency.
And funny enough… remember that little blog post yesterday? About how I was intentionally ignoring the house mess just to see if anyone else would step up? Yeahhh… turns out the maintenance guy needed to come inside. And to do that, he’d need access to the garage—where my collection of “I’ll deal with that later” boxes lives.
The kids woke up late for school (because chaos loves company), so they were in no position to help. I did what any mildly deranged rebel mom would do: I sped them to school (yes, sped… I was fully in my villain era, sunglasses and all) and raced back home to deal with the garage.
I tackled the garage, mopped the entryway, and sprinted up to the third floor of our townhouse to get the upstairs ready before maintenance arrived. In the end, I’m kind of grateful for the forced cleanup. I really do function better when things are in their place.
And I did it. I got it all done. But my Ideal Day?
Shot to hell. No survivors.
I had over 5,000 steps logged before breakfast and had sweat out the weight of a small child before 10 a.m. The A/C had just tripped a safety sensor due to condensation, but it felt like the whole house had turned into a convection oven powered by irony.
By the time he left and the air kicked back on, I was already wrecked.
So I reassessed the day. Social posts—those sneaky little things—have actually taken root in my rhythm. I didn’t intend for them to be a priority, but they’ve become this beautiful accountability. And even though I had technically “moved” all morning, I decided to count it as my workout. Because if garage squats, stair sprints, and emotional sweating don’t count… I don’t know what does.
Remember my “elevated at-home OOTD” goal from yesterday? Yeah. Not today, Satan. Today’s outfit was a sports bra and running shorts. I did not feel sexy. I felt… functional. Barely.
After school pickup and the final push to post my reel, I looked at the clock.
7:13 p.m.
So I asked Glitch—my digital accountability buddy—how I could still end my day in rhythm. How I could end it like my Ideal Day… even though it had been anything but.
And here’s what I came back to: Real life is part of the rhythm. Even when the rhythm sounds more like a garage band warming up than a symphony. Sometimes the chaos is the work. Sometimes chaos IS the cardio. Sometimes the lesson isn’t in how well I followed the schedule—it’s in how quickly I returned to it.
This is why I chose rhythm over rigidity.
Because I’m not just building an Ideal Day.
I’m building an Ideal Life.
And that means I have to adapt when the Texas humidity (or a sprint panic clean) decides to throw a wrench in it.
See you tomorrow.
(Unless I delete the internet and move into the woods.)
—Jenli
Day 8 of The Main Character Experiment
“Trying to become the main character without losing my mind.”