I’ve been meditating just about every day since August 2020. Yes, it started during the pandemic, as so many of our well-intentioned plans did; my friend Andrew introduced me to the 10 percent Happier app (now just called Happier– I guess you get to choose how much happier you want to be…) and I downloaded it and got going.
5.33 years later, here’s where I am according to the app (which, like all apps, is all-seeing and all-tracking):
I asked Google how many days it’s been since I downloaded the app in August 2020, and it answered 1958 days. So, it would seem I’ve meditated at least once everyday since then.
Nope! Wrong!
Since the app also tracks how many days in a row I’ve meditated, it tells me that the most days in a row I’ve gone is 162 days. Then I missed a day, or rather the app thought so because I was at a friend’s cabin in the mountains of North Carolina with no wifi. Hmphf.
But of course I miss days. I missed a day last Sunday because I was up early to take my sister to the airport for her flight to Charlotte, only to pick her up 4 hours later (flight canceled) and take her back for a rescheduled flight (which was also 4 hours late but eventually left; sigh…). I missed a day in October when I was flying back from a conference in Oregon to Boston. Sometimes when I’m under the weather I miss a day.
I think you get the point here– missing days of otherwise-daily habits happens. But does that mean that my meditation doesn’t count as a daily habit?
I’m still trying to make my peace with the idea of sticking to a a habit that I intend to do daily, knowing (as I do now, armed with 5 years’ worth of data) that I won’t do it absolutely every day. How many days in a row counts as daily? How many times can I miss doing my habitual thing and still count as doing it daily?
This reminds me of my students, worrying and fretting over their class attendance (I’m in finals week, so student worrying is a prominent part of my work life at the moment). I don’t penalize my students for missing classes, but if they miss more than three weeks of the course, they just don’t get credit for taking it (unless there are special circumstances, which happens sometimes).
Why am I bringing all this up now? Because in one of the substacks I read (by Suleika Jaouad, who writes The Isolation Journals), she posted “On the Art of Showing Up”, with an essay by Michael Bierut, who does something called the 100 Day Project. It’s about picking some activity– for him it’s drawing, but it can be anything– for 100 days in a row.
I both love this and fear this.
I love it because I want (or want to want, hard to tell which) to do something– either writing or drawing– every day. Why? Because setting aside a little time for creativity always feels great when I do it. It doesn’t have to be a lot– ten minutes? five?– but I’d like it to be a more regular part of my life.
I fear it because I fear missing days, and then feeling bad because of it.
But hey, I miss meditation days occasionally, and I’ve figured out how to handle it. I feel annoyed or chagrined or surprised that it happened. Maybe there’s some fretting. But then I do it the following day. And some days later, I notice that those days have passed with daily meditation, and I’m happy about that.
Can I approach this new thing with similar level-headedness and grace?
I hope so. I think this is something I want for myself. So, I’m starting after I get back home from visiting family in South Carolina for Christmas (note to self: don’t start a new habit while traveling during holidays).
What about you, dear readers: what happens to do when you decide– really decide– that you want to enact some new daily activity? I’d love to hear from you.
