I currently have a 141-day streak on DuoLingo. The more days in a row I practice Spanish with that little green owl, the prouder I feel – and the more determined I am to keep my streak going. Losing those 141 golden calendar days and having to start over at 1?? It’s unthinkable.
Clearly, the concept of being On A Streak is motivating to me.
But The Streak has an evil twin. This is the string of accumulated days in which I have not done something, not started that habit I kept meaning to do, not read that book or taken that walk or called that friend. Similar to cold being the absence of heat, this isn’t really a streak in itself, but the absence of one. It’s a buildup of squandered potential. It is The Negative Streak.
The Negative Streak doesn’t cheer me on the way being On A Streak does. Instead, it hovers. It looms. All those blank calendar days, all the unchecked boxes, peer over my shoulder and *tsk* at me. And whenever I tell myself that any day is a good day to start something, The Negative Streak taps me on the shoulder.
“Remember all the days you’ve already failed?” it asks sweetly, frowning in false concern. “You’ve already procrastinated so much. Be honest with yourself. Today won’t be any different.”
Suddenly, instead of facing forward, looking at all the time I have in front of me, I’ve turned around to view an insurmountable wall of wasted days. It’s dispiriting, to say the least.
They say that perfectionists procrastinate to preclude failure, and I think The Negative Streak is born of that same mindset. “Look at how easy it was for you to fail on such a small scale,” it says, “and think how much worse it will be when you (inevitably, given your track record) fail at the big stuff! Much safer not to fight the inertia and just keep not doing things.”
The main place I’ve seen this lately is in my writing. All the days of not managing to post on this blog or to even open the document of my manuscript have snowballed into an overwhelmingly enormous idea of this big, blobby project labeled just “WRITE MORE” which is hardly actionable or realistic because it has nowhere to start. I am a person who needs lists, steps, concrete actions to take.
So I did two things.
One was that I actually kept a habit journal. For the month of June, I tracked the habits I would ideally like to make a daily occurrence in my life. I didn’t write once in that time, but I did get a better picture of where my priorities are, and seeing the places in my life where I am On A Streak (reading for fun, getting outside, exercising) was helpful.
The second was reading a blog post by a dear writing friend where she talked about why she has decided to start a secondary project just for the fun of it. She explains that her Real Work in Progress is daunting, scary, and difficult, and she needed something to remind her why writing is fun. And I realized I also needed something to remind myself why writing is fun, without any attached expectations. So I dug out an old idea for a story and started writing. There’s no cohesive narrative, no specific plans for story – I’m just having fun developing that world. (There are dragons!)
So for July, maybe I’ll get to fill in the little color-coded square for “wrote today” more often, even if it’s just a paragraph about the etiquette of talking about hoards in draconian culture. I’m hoping to put some distance between me and The Negative Streak.
The Grammar Changeling 