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The Streak

A while ago, a friend of mine decided to do a 30 day "burpee challenge." I've mentioned burpees before, but they're a form of exercise that can be challenging after a few of them. In this case, the challenge was to do 30 of them every day for 30 days in a row. She then decided that she'd like company on this particular challenge, so she invited a few of us to play along with her. I'd been particularly bad about going to the gym at that point, so I was happy to participate. If nothing else, I'd get some form of exercise for 30 days.

This plan worked out pretty well, since we all managed to hit the 30 day mark. In fact, it worked so well, that we agreed to keep going past the original 30 days. I wasn't very good about tracking the number of consecutive days, but I know for sure that we hit at least 100 days.

At one point, though, I realized that I had gotten accustomed to the 30 burpees, so it wasn't very good exercise any more. Knowing that, I decided to increase the number to 40 burpees every day. I was still good about doing them every day despite the extra reps, though, so I kept the streak of consecutive days alive.

Then, one day, tragedy struck. A combination of a busy day at work and a late outing meant that I didn't have time to go to the gym during the day, and I got home after midnight. My streak was over. I don't remember how many consecutive days I had hit, but I could no longer claim that I hadn't missed a day in some number of days.

I made up the missing reps the next day (i.e., I did 80 the next day), but it wasn't the same. The magic was gone somehow, and a switch had been flipped in my mind. I suddenly found that other days were missed after that, even though I'd managed to complete over 100 consecutive days prior to missing that first one. There's probably a psychology lesson in there somewhere, but I realized that I was no longer as diligent as I had once been about my daily burpees.

Now, it just so happens that I have another streak that's been alive for a while: I've managed to write a weekly blog post for close to three years (knock on wood, I'm not trying to jinx this). Knowing my experience with the burpees, I'm going to work just a tad harder to protect my blog post streak. I know myself, and it's quite possible that if I miss one weekly post, I might just miss a few shortly after that. I ain't having that.

So why is all of that pertinent? I knew I wasn't going to have much time to write a blog post this week, so I wrote this one last week. Allow me to pat myself on the back for making sure my blog post streak continued. Also, who says you can't learn from your mistakes?
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