Last year, I started using Duolingo to help me learn Spanish. I managed to stick with it pretty well by making it a daily habit. There were a few days in which I missed the lesson, but a feature called “streak freeze” allowed me to maintain my streak when that happened. Unfortunately, I somehow lost the ability to use that feature a while back, so if I missed another lesson, I’d lose my streak. That finally happened two nights ago.
I spent most of my day at home on Wednesday, went out in the late afternoon to visit with a friend, and came back in time to finish everything I hadn’t done earlier. Despite having plenty of time, however, I kept putting off my Spanish lesson, figuring I could do it later. By the time “later” rolled around, it was almost midnight. Duolingo switches to the next day at midnight, so if I don’t have my lesson finished by then, it records me as having missed the previous day. I raced to my Kindle and started going through the lesson as quickly as possible. I didn’t move quickly enough, though, and my streak came to an end.
I had maintained that streak for 525 days. That’s longer than I’ve been consistently blogging, unicycling, meditating, and stretching. I managed to keep that streak going through 4 weekend dance workshops in 3 different states, many late nights and early mornings, several days in which I worked all day at two different jobs, and a number of other occasions that required me to be super efficient with my time management. And now, just because I lost track of time on a fairly normal night at home, my streak is over. No matter what else was going on, I could always look forward to continuing that streak. When I lost it, I felt sad and got ready for bed. I have enough self-awareness at this point to know that the later I stay up, the worse I feel, so the last thing I wanted to do was stay awake longer than necessary. So I skipped stretching and doing chinups like I had planned. Instead, I read one paragraph from my book and then did my nightly routine before calling it a day. Some additional breathing exercises in bed helped me relax and go to sleep more easily, as did letting my thoughts about the whole situation run for a bit without trying to suppress them.
All the stuff I did on Wednesday night helped since I felt much better yesterday. I hardly thought about losing my streak at all and when I did, it didn’t both me much. Writing this blog post helped me get it off my chest and going swing dancing with some friends in St. Augustine gave me a wonderful boost that made me feel great. All of this helped me jump right back into my usual routines and move past this experience without issue. This experience serves as a good reminder for me to work on my priorities in a timely manner. Plus I no longer feel pressured to maintain my streak, I still remember most of the Spanish that I’ve learned, I can keep using the program to learn even more, and nothing truly bad happened. As of now, I feel at peace with this situation and see it as a learning experience. I hope this post makes sense and helps you move past those little bumps in the road. Take care and I’ll see you in the next post.