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I mentioned yesterday how last year I posted 348 times on my blog.
I omitted to say that I had set myself up for a “daily photo” challenge at the beginning of the year.
The last time I checked, years generally counted 365 days, sometimes even 366. Never 348.
Not only that, but I did not exclusively post photos; some days, if you’ll believe it, I wrote. On a few lazy ones, I shared quotes from my favorite authors.
Long story short, I did not post 365 photos throughout 2021, but 320.
Old me
Old me would have considered this a failure, entirely focused on the 17 days I didn’t publish anything. The 45 days when I posted but not a photo would have tortured me.
Even worse, I would have probably stopped earlier in the year, on the first day I missed, because such is the dark side of streaks: they help you going for as long as they last, only to become an insurmountable obstacle the day after you break them.
New me
New me is happy and proud!
In 2020 I had hit the “Publish” button 41 times only. So from that perspective, last year does represent an eight-fold improvement over the previous one instead of a failure.
Focusing on the hits instead of the misses helped me keep going. Did I skip a day or even two? Never mind breaking the streak. I’ll only consider publishing again as an improvement.
Life is an asymptote
Old me thought the purpose of everything had to be reaching perfection, an illusory quest, but one I believed was right as the opposite, I thought, was stagnation.
Today I understand that I’ll never reach perfection and that the alternative is infinite progression. Nothing can ever be perfect, but everything can be continually be improved.
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