I noted on the other blog yesterday that I missed the 25th. This is definitely my first miss in over a year, and possibly my first in over two. (There were one or two iffy ones near the beginning.)
I thought about what to do with that for a while. My wife suggested I just post something I did blog related yesterday. I have technically posted after midnight a few times (or posted filler and gone back and fixed it), but I feel like once I've gone to bed and woken up I forfeit that.
I considered just deleting the whole thing. That doesn't really serve any purpose other than self-flagellation.
A lot of "streak" activities on other sites or advice say you should do things like give yourself one cheat day every week or month, or that you can keep your streak if you miss one day but do something to make up for it (similar to my wife's suggestion). The one that I thought was most interesting was the idea that every time you break your streak you lose half the length, so if I was on day 500 it'd go back to 250. That or some kind of "punishment" make up (READ ALL OF MEDITATIONS IN ONE GO!) is definitely my favorite from a gamification perspective. But, I don't actually really like gamification. I considered making this my "penance" post and then doing a normal one today to double up and make up for it, but that feels like gaming the system instead of just doing the work. (Besides, I have like 50 "make ups" baked in from back when I did the weekly review and stuff.) I briefly considered posting the writing I did on Sunday. I plan to add an original fiction component to my blog rotation this year, but I don't feel like what I had was particularly good/sharable and, again, I'm not here to game the system with, "oops, I didn't forget, I just didn't post this other thing..."
I researched how long a "good" blog streak is. 100 seemed to be the minimum, with 300 or 50 weeks also popular. At least I was impressive before I went out.
In the end, I think the right answer is to reflect a little on it and move on.
It doesn't really change my goals. I still want to be more well read and better educated. I still want to write these little notes to myself, if no one else. I still enjoy doing the blog and think the current form is fairly good.
It does suck for these long line by line type entries. I tried not to get myself stuck in two at once and failed. (I kind of blame Eliot for that.) Like I said, it snowed a bunch the other day, which distracted me. That, and I was trying to play a bunch of game demos before a sale ended. I definitely spent too much time being fake-productive "testing" games, rather than real productive on this. I've talked before about how I think it's okay to do consume some amount of junk food media, but I definitely ate too much junk and gave myself a hangover on Sunday.
But, at the end of the day, the streak doesn't actually matter at all. It's cool to say I had a year+ streak (it's a nice round amount) I guess I can restart a definitive counter from yesterday, so I actually know how many for sure, instead of vaguely handwaving "I think". So those are both good.
Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus would tell me I shouldn't care. It's not bothering me, my reaction is bothering me. It nature wanted me to keep a streak forever, it'd make it easier. (Or maybe I'm not committed enough to philosophy. MA talks about that a lot too.)
What matters is the stuff I read, and learn, and think about. How it helps guide me to spend my time and my energy better. In a way, missing the day helped me refocus. I thought about it, considered dropping it, or going to once a week, and said, "No, this is a worthwhile use of my time every day, and this just shows me I need to make sure I pay better attention to it."
So, starting tomorrow, it's back to normal. I do think I need to do something about the readings right now. The double line summaries are a slog. Some Fruits of Solitude is great as a break from longer pieces. Meditations is good, but repetitive. Either way, doing them like this is a pain. I might just move off of both of them and relegate them both to backups while I dive into a longer piece. I might continue Meditations but more as a traditional entry instead of a line by line summary (I could move through it a lot more quickly and easily.) It might be fun to come up with a generic abbreviation for all the repetitive ones. "MM" for all the, "YOU'RE GONNA DIE!", "DN" for all the, "DO NATURE!", etc.
Consider January 25th my Rocky V. It's bad, but I didn't hear no bell.
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