Tag Archives: streaks

7 years of daily blogging

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Yesterday marked my 7th anniversary of writing a daily blog. I ended the original post that started this streak saying,

“I’m not getting younger and more than ever, NOW is the best time to start.

I tried over a decade ago, now I’m going to do it – a short daily blog.” ~ Daily-Ink, July 6, 2019

It wasn’t quite 10 years earlier, the idea for Daily Ink was actually attempted September 29, 2010. I was living in China and had purchased a leather bound book and decided that I’d write in it, take a picture of what I’d written, and post it on a blog which I changed addresses from datruss.davidtruss(.com) to daily-ink.davidtruss(.com).

In the original ‘first post’ I explained:

“The title ‘Daily Ink’ is inspired by Stephen Downes “Ol Daily” and his “Half an Hour” that he attempts to decticate to writing each day… and to my former student Kris Bradburn whose blog is cleverly named “Wanderng Ink”.

I stopped reading the Ol Daily for a while but Stephen has started sharing it on LinkedIn, and I’m back to reading it again. Also, just a couple days ago Kris’ substack blog arrived in my email. It’s wonderful to see the two original inspirations for my blog title still blogging.

Although it took almost a decade to make it happen, once I committed, I committed. How much longer will I go? I’m honestly not sure. What I do know is that I’m not ready to break the streak. The reward of writing every day exceeds the effort. Like I say in my byline:

“Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.”

And so my Daily-Ink will keep getting inked for a while longer…



 

I blew my streak

I started Wordle with a perfect attempt, but it was a cheat. My daughter was trying to solve one and I looked at the 3 attempts she had and declared that I knew the answer. She said, “Don’t tell me”, so I went to the puzzle and tried the answer, and it was right. What I didn’t know was that when I started to play a while later that this first attempt would show up in my game history. So while I have one correct first-guess attempt on my stats, it’s not real.

What was real until today was that I was just days away from a year-long streak… and I blew it!

I lost today after a 361 day streak:

I share my Wordle daily in a couple WhatsApp chats, one with my Mom, sisters, nieces and nephew, and one with a couple friends in Toronto. I have one friend that I share other puzzles with and we occasionally share Wordle, but usually other games. I don’t share on social media, and so for some people this sad post will be the first indication of my chronic habit of playing this puzzle.

Tomorrow I’ll start a new streak. I have a weekday morning ritual: Wordle, Daily-Ink blog post, meditation, 20 minute cardio, stretch, and then a quick workout of at least on body part before showering for work. I go off script on weekends, but still start with Wordle. It’s fun, it gets my brain going, and it connects me to family and friends on WhatsApp.

But I’m quite disappointed this morning that I didn’t get to a full year streak. Hopefully I’ll share better news one year from tomorrow! #Optimism

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Spoiler alert, here is my failed attempt for Wordle #1,037 (click here to see it).