New Year. New Streaks?
Continuing the 2023, 2022, and 2021 traditions, it is time to re-evaluate my streaks.
Last year, I committed to pushing myself to be weird, but I failed.
I have also found myself taking shortcuts.
I will “meditate” while walking or driving home from dropping my oldest off at school. My “dancing” is frequently only a minute long, simple hip-swinging and hand-waving. I usually performed the piano by playing an app on my phone. I am more familiar with sheet music, but I still couldn’t tell you what keys are associated with the notes.
Treating something as a checkbox makes it a chore, not something that fills you with joy. If I only go through my existing streaks and say how they are going, I am not genuinely evaluating their purpose. However, not all streaks need to bring happiness.
My streaks give me guidance in my days. If I had no streaks, I would consume media all day. Having Timecap as my checkpoint allows me to stay on track, but it can also limit my flexibility in my daily actions. I live in fear of falling into depression and inactivity, but life requires finding a balance. Having so many streaks can put limits on how my time is spent.
I would like to be able to have a steak without it being a 100% pure streak. I have it drilled in my brain that if you tell someone you’re a vegetarian, that means you never eat me. But can we not also say you try to eat vegetarian as often as possible, without feeling like someone is judging you?
I hear people say, “I don’t really eat sweets.” I’m sure they occasionally have a piece of pie or cake, but they also give themselves direction. When I say, “I’m a sugar fiend,” I’m giving myself permission to eat more sugar because that’s who I am. But if I started telling myself, “I prefer spicy over sweet,” maybe I would curb my consumption and lower my A1C.
I want to be the best version of myself, and tracking my streaks helps me do that. When I get down on myself, I can look back at the seven and a half years I have been running and be lifted up at the improvements I have made for myself and my health in the last decade. It is just a single data point. It also does not guarantee I am doing the optimal thing.
It may be time to start tracking my faults more than successes. Being aware of how much time I spend on my phone doing unproductive things.
But I’ll start by simply reviewing streaks in my next few posts.
