the attempt matters too, not just the end result
I leave the box unchecked but I write all this here to show that the attempt was made. I tried.
I've been consistently using a planner this year and I get these little spurts of dopamine from checking things off my list of tasks for the day. A recurring task is to make paper.
There are some days that I'm not realistic. There's too much else to do and it doesn't happen. But sometimes there are days where I clock in and try my darndest and the paper does not get made because I know when I've been defeated. Today was one of those days.
The cardstock that I shredded yesterday didn't soften at all and in attempting to pulverize it, my blender made a sound I had never heard before. One minute later, the cardstock stayed firmly intact. I didn't want to break my blender so I quickly shredded some more paper and researched how long paper needed to soak at a minimum for it to be able to be transformed into paper pulp. I wanted to make my sheets before the sun set so I waited a few hours and tried again.
But I didn't like that this flimsier paper changed my slurry color grey so I decided to add a different cardstock blend that I shredded earlier in the day. But I should have known that it wouldn't be ready to turn into pulp either because it was too thick for my shredder, so I had torn it into squares, and submerged them in hot water. My blender tried its best but because I was in a hurry, I didn't quality check before adding the blend into my slurry and it made a mess of things.
I couldn't salvage today's slurry because I couldn't fish them all out. Not to mention, blending it would be a struggle so I made the executive decision to sift my slurry again, putting most of the liquid back in the fridge and leaving the pulp in containers at room temperature so they could disintegrate some more before I tried to turn it into paper all over again tomorrow.
Normally, I would not check off that I made paper if I physically did not have sheets drying by the end of the night so that I could inspect it and make new sheets in the morning with fresh data to inform how I could improve on my next batch. But today, I'm really tempted to checkmark that I did make paper because boy did I learn a lot and take a lot of notes.
I tell myself that the attempt matters too, not just the end result. So, I leave the box unchecked but I write all this here to show that the attempt was made. I tried. I really did to make paper today.