Miss One Day, and the Whole World Crumbles

But in all seriousness, it's true.

Habits.

At least for me, the best laid habits are ruined by skipping just one day.
Or forgetting about whatever-it-is. Or simply saying too many times in one day that I will "do it later" - which 99% of the time leads to it not getting done.

And that skipping of even one day makes it easier to skip the next.
And the next.
And the next.
For who knows how long until...

I either realize it's been WAY TOO LONG since I've done something, or I feel HORRIBLE about skipping it for as long as I have.

For example, last week was a bit off, and starting with Sunday, I didn't do my cleaning. At all. For a good three days. I managed to do laundry, and a few dishes on Wednesday, but for four days, nothing got done. Luckily, the house was in a good enough state before hand that it wasn't too bad, but the kitchen got quite gross. All the dishes, and all my pots and pans, were dirty and in the sink and on the counters.

So, I did the dishes.
And then, skipped again the next day, because I was already out of the habit of doing it every day.

Same thing happened with making dinner, even. Skip one day of cooking, and it's that much easier to skip the next. Which wasn't helped by the fact that I always make sure there's a variety of things that can just be popped in the oven.

As much work that goes into building up a habit, breaking that streak is really easy.
And that's kind of depressing.

Except that it's not. 

Habits are basically things you do over and over again.
Guess what else you do over and over again.

Things you practice. 
You practice by doing the same thing over and over again until you're better. Until you've "perfected" how you do whatever-it-may-be.

If you think of your habits like practicing, it gets much happier.
Because practice means there's always room for improvement. Practice means you can eventually move forward.
And practice means that some days just aren't going to be 100% awesome.

For example, I've practiced guitar before. Not much, but a little, here and there. And now, as it stands, I can do the (chord-less version) intro to a System of a Down song pretty well. When I first picked up the guitar, I learned the riff to a Nirvana song, and that was about it (which was a whole four different notes, and no chords).
That took a lot of practice. But there's also a lot more to learn.

It works the same for my habits, like cleaning my house or cooking dinner.
Some days, it won't go well. Some days, I just won't have the mojo to do anything, or I won't always see the reason to do it.
And some times, it will work out perfectly, and it will be beautiful.
But, no matter what, there's always tomorrow, and there's never an end to the places you can go with it.

A much more promising outlook, don't you think?

~Havok