20. Anti-climactic?

In Better Than Before, Rubin talks about tailoring your rewards for your habits to your habit. Rather than sabotaging your goals by saying things like, "when I lose 10 pounds, I'll reward myself with a piece of chocolate cake" she suggests that you come up with rewards that encourage you to continue your habits. For example, in this case the reward could be nice exercise clothes that you love, or a new set of knives that make cooking at home easier. One company she referenced did something that made me chuckle. They rewarded employees who used the employee gym 75 times in a year with a free membership the following year. Your reward is more exercise!

I mention this because when I told David last night that I'd be finishing my project today we talked about what my reward should be. Without missing a beat, he said, "Your reward is five more blog posts!" It's true though, the best habits are when the reward is the habit itself. I have loved getting to write more, having an outlet that has nothing to do with my kids or with anything, with no pressures except myself. I have learned more about myself and I have increased my hope and energy for life.

So my reward for writing is that I'm going to write more. Anti-climactic, right? Or is it? (Cue ominous music.) Anyhoo, I'm still completely on the fence about whether I will write on the same schedule or less frequently. I am slightly freaked out that going to not-everyday will make me lose the habit. There are still other creative things I want to do, so I'll have to figure that out. For example, you've noticed I haven't posted many recipes lately because I've been writing, not cooking, duh. And you can't see my family because they've grown so thin from the lack of food around here.

My friend Christine has been one of my inspirations and I might try her pattern of either MWF or TTh. The main thing is carving out time for pursuing creative passions (and/or vocation/vacation and non-conformity) every single day. However much or little I post here, I'll plan to check-in in a month about how I feel about my new rhythm.

Writing and posting here shall be a sort of accountability that I'm keeping up with any and all of these things. Either way, thank you to all of you for following along on my journey and being a wonderfully supportive audience! I'll keep up with some regularity as best as I can.

I don't think I mentioned this quote from the podcast I praised so highly at the beginning of my project. Brown and Gilbert (ooh going to last names now to shake things up) propose changing the question, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" to "What would you do, even if you knew you might fail?" In other words, "What's worth doing even if I fail?" I think for me the answer to the question at least today, is just to keep trying, exploring, and being curious. Super broad and vague but I'm embracing that.

I'm very intrigued by the concept raised in Rubin's book, being a "data point of one," but nonetheless "a very convincing data point." The project I created here was so random, almost ex nihilo, but I am stunned by everything I discovered in pursuing this thirty day (but twenty posts) project.

So now that I've reached my goal, can I have some fruit tart?