This is my 200th blog post, and the 51st Friday I have posted in a row. I have published a new blog post every Friday during 2020, and one of the things that kept me going was the desire to keep it up every Friday of an entire year. But I have decided I am going to break the streak now on December 11. Here is why:
Throughout the tribulations of 2020, one of the major things that kept me sane was keeping up with my streaks. I was writing books, making a YouTube channel, learning Japanese, and keeping up with this blog, and I was meeting my deadlines for all of them. Being unemployed during COVID-19, it was a way of proving to myself that I was a responsible person who kept up with productive habits.
This changed mid-November. It was National Novel Writing Month, and I had finally landed a job as a contract tutor for an online company. This meant I had to keep up with doing my job, writing 1,667 words per day, 1/2 hour a day on Japanese practice, writing a blog post every week, and uploading a new video to YouTube every two weeks.
And I crashed.
The first sign was when I did not get my YouTube video up on Tuesday like usual, and had to upload it on Wednesday instead. You might roll your eyes and say, “Big deal.” But for someone whose sense of self-worth hinged on keeping up with his streaks, it was a big deal, and it was the first domino to fall.
A week and a half later, I fell short of the 1,667 daily word goal. It was the first time in the five years I have done NaNoWriMo that I missed a goal I set myself.
That was it. From then on, it was all I could do to write 200 words every day, much less 1.7 thousand. The streak was broken, and it wasn’t coming back.
That was when I started to seriously think about what I was putting myself through with all these hobbies. So much work, and for what? Almost nobody reads my blog posts or stories. I don’t even like Japanese culture. I’m poor and essentially unemployed, and these things are taking away from time I could be spending on a job.
I quit Japanese practice when my streak reached 600 days, and have hardly thought about it since. No regrets. When November was over, I stopped writing my book, even though the story wasn’t finished yet. Of all my hobbies, there are only two streaks left: YouTube and this blog.
I am going to keep up with YouTube, because having one hobby is healthy, and YouTube is the one that gives me the most joy and sense of purpose right now. But for A Scientist’s Fiction, this post will be the final post in my streak.
You may say, “Chris, there are only two Fridays left in 2020. You made it through NaNoWriMo. It’s smooth sailing from here. Why not just finish it up?”
And I could. I had planned for this to be the final blog post, and had two others lined up for this week and next week. I could write those and finish out the year. But I won’t.
This crisis has brought me face to face with parts of myself I never wanted to acknowledge, and forced me to rethink my values and motivations. The truth is, for as long as I can remember I have lived in pursuit of approval and validation. I wanted everyone to see how smart and wise and talented I am. This has led me to build up all of these streaks and crank out blog posts, many of them ending up not good.
I could finish out the year, getting those satisfying check marks filling out the entire 2020 Fridays chart. But that would mean giving in to the forces that drove me to crash. Breaking off this streak two weeks before my goal is my way of tossing that aside and signaling to myself that I’m ready to live with new, more wholesome and sustainable motivations.
I will still update this blog from time to time, but when I do, it will not be because I want to feel good about myself, but because I have something worth saying. Starting now, I will focus on four things: strengthening my relationships with my friends and family whom I could not be more thankful for, my physical health, making quality YouTube videos, and making tangible steps toward a realistic and sustainable career.
Until next time.
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