by Chris McGinty
I think for my blog post today I’m just going to muse a little bit. I’ve been enjoying the chance to sit down and write more since 2024 has begun. This is partially because I’ve decided not to work as much over the last couple of weeks. I’m sure that won’t last. It’s also partially that I set sort of a proper priority that I’m going to try to maintain as long as I don’t have to deal with any real life nonsense.
I’m not really big about New Year’s resolutions. I believe that you can set a new resolution at any point. In spite of that, human-made abstract constructs will only take hold in our psyche when the concept is strong enough. For some reason, the start of a new year just seems like a very strong concept in our minds. I once did a blog post every day for a month, and at the end of that month I almost just went ahead and didn’t do the last day to intentionally break the streak habit. What did happen is it after that month I didn’t end up writing a whole lot for a while. The point is that it could have been any 30 days in a row, but doing it within the confines of a month seemed to have a clearer concept to it.
What I’m saying is that while making a grand decision about what you’re going to do for this year seems to hold more sway over people’s minds, there really is no reason you can’t start any given time. I watch a guy on YouTube who has been doing a streak habit of one video per day for a year, but what is interesting there is that he started that streak in the middle of the year and will end it in the middle of this year. It is just as valid.
The upside of a street habit is, of course that it creates a habit. The downside of streak habits is that sometimes it creates really bad work. I’m just going to say it. This is not a good blog post. The weird thing is this kind of streak habit can produce some of the worst stuff that you’ve ever done, but sometimes it also produces the best when you might not have normally sat down to write. I don’t know the answer. I personally hate streak habits, but I can’t say that they’re necessarily bad. This blog post is evidence that they are, but I have written a couple of good blog posts this year.
Chris McGinty is a blogger who sometimes considers skipping these blurbs, because really this is just a streak habit that plays out at an inconsistent rate. You know what the blog post wasn’t good, so I’m not even going to try to make this blurb good. Take that God of streak habits. As far as I’m aware there’s not actually a god of streak habits.