Streaks and Recents vs Resolutions

All of Gen Z, prepare to cringe as I butcher the use of these terms.  You’ve been warned. 

I still don’t understand the concept of streaks and recents, whether on Snapchat or Instagram or whatever platform, game or app you are using.  The reminder to maintain my streak seems to appear whether I am using a free version, or have paid for it.  

I get that they are carrots, designed to incentivize a daily habit (aka addiction) to whatever it is.   

They are everywhere—from pure brain candy to the ones that are supposed to bring me meaningful longevity and ward off dementia.  Duolingo reminds me that I have set goals, repeatedly have lost my streak freeze, and must therefore start over.  Duo is not subtle, with the owl sleeping and nagging on my phone.  “These reminders don’t seem to be working.”  I’m aware.  Never mind that the reason I lost the freeze and didn’t practice Spanish was that I was immersed in another language on vacation.  At least sometimes it was.  

Does it really matter that I didn’t practice my Spanish grammar if I was attempting to converse with those around me instead?  Sometimes even in a second or third language?  You try Spanitalian.  

My smartwatch is another monkey on my back.  “You’ve set fitness goals.  Is today the day you’ll meet them?”  Fuck off already.  It’s the holidays, and I managed not to eat my weight in chex mix and krumkake.  I did get on the elliptical trainer for 30 minutes on Christmas day—what more do you want? Or I’m on vacation: do I really need to log my steps when I climbed 400 some of them to the top of a cathedral? ...and yet I'm still striving for my atta girl, my goals achieved from the stupid thing.

Wordle can be accessed via an app or my NYT subscription.  I usually play from the app. If I play after reading today’s online paper, from the link at the end, it doesn’t count towards my streak.  OMG.  Streak resets. (I do sometimes use this to pad my stats—look!  I got it in 2 tries.  I can’t pretend to guess it on the first try, because my entire family knows that AISLE is my starting word...and it’s unlikely to change to NEXUS soon.  Or MOIST. [Shiver]).  

Pre-wordle, I had Wordscapes.  Make as many words as possible from a set of letters, no repeats.  That is, until I missed too many days, had to reinstall it, and got sent back to the beginning.  I’m not going through 3 and 4 letter words using A-H-S-T again.  It won’t give me credit for SHAT, no matter how often I enter it.   

Watch just reminded me that I haven’t gotten up for a while.  Ugh. 

When I started this rant, December 27, New Year’s resolutions were far from my mind.  Since then, tips to make effective resolutions and make them stick have bombarded my inbox and TV viewing.  Are resolutions any different from trying to maintain a streak?   Is it more important to make a change for improving our health, or to be able to say that we kept a resolution for Dry January?  Don’t even go there—my birthday is in January, and I feel compelled to celebrate being alive with my beverage of choice, whatever it is.  

I know that tracking things helps ingrain them, to make them habits.  I know that just the act of writing down what we eat generally leads to weight loss.  I don’t know the exact reason: if it’s the shame of seeing “one row of oreos” or “one bottle of wine” on the list, calculating how many calories in said row and/or bottle, or the trouble of writing it down or typing into my phone (what?  a row isn’t listed as a serving size?  NM, I’ll skip it or just eat one.). 

If you are worried that I may have an eating or drinking disorder based on the above, fret not.  And thank you for your concern.  

The tracking seems to take priority over the activity—does it matter if I reached 10,000 steps if the watch didn’t record it?  I could try to make up for it by counting my tiny dog’s steps.  These surely outnumber mine at least ten to one.  Do you think that the wristband from my old fitbit will work as a collar on a seven-pound maltipoo?  Only a lunatic would try this on a cat—they are far too lazy and feisty.   We’d get maybe 30 steps in a day. 

I don’t need a blurry picture of the dark to maintain my snapstreak, thank you.  I prefer the creepy nose distorting filter favored by my nephew. Just between us—he doesn’t need to know that.  

As you may have gathered, I have made no resolutions, and have no current streaks.  I’m okay with this.  Don’t tell my watch.