Alright, so I wanted to talk about this whole “up par” thing. Not in golf, I wish, but just, you know, getting my stuff together. For a while there, I felt like I was just… lagging. My output, my energy, whatever you wanna call it, definitely wasn’t up par. It was bugging me, big time.
I’d been reading bits and pieces online, you see. Stumbled across that popular idea, the one that says something like, “it takes 21 days to form a new habit.” Yeah, that one. Seemed simple enough, right? A magic number. I thought, “Okay, maybe this is what I need. A straight shot to get myself back up par.”
So, The Grand Experiment Began
I decided I was going to apply this to my writing. I’d let it slide, and it was gnawing at me. So, the plan was: write every single day for 21 days. No excuses. Get those words out. Make myself feel productive again, get that writing skill feeling like it’s actually up par, or at least closer to it.
The first few days? Oh man. Day one, I was all fired up. Super motivated. Pumped out a decent chunk of words. Felt good. Day two, a bit less jazz, but I pushed through. By day five, though, the struggle was real. My brain felt like mush. I remember thinking:
- “This is way harder than it sounds.”
- “Who even came up with 21 days? Did they try it with a job and kids?”
- “Just skip today. One day won’t hurt the ‘up par’ mission.”
But I stuck with it, mostly. There were days I barely scraped by, writing absolute garbage just to hit a word count I’d stupidly set for myself. But I was doing it. Around day 10 or so, I actually started to feel a bit of a rhythm. Like, “Hey, maybe this ‘up par’ thing is achievable with this system!” I was feeling pretty smug, not gonna lie.
And then, because life loves to throw a wrench in things, my internet decided to take a vacation. For three whole days. No research, no easy way to type things up and save them where I wanted. My whole routine, my fragile little 21-day streak I was building to get “up par,” just… poof. It got complicated. I tried writing offline, but the disruption just threw me off. The momentum was gone. After the internet came back, I tried to pick it up, but it wasn’t the same. I missed a day, then another. The whole 21-day challenge just sort of fizzled out.
Was I “up par” then? Nope. Not according to the challenge. I felt like a bit of a loser, honestly. Failed the magic 21 days. But then I looked at what I had done. In those couple of weeks, even with the crash and burn, I’d written more than I had in the previous two months combined. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.
So, what I learned from trying to get “up par” this way? Well, these neat little theories, these challenges, they’re fine for a bit of a kickstart, I guess. But real improvement, getting things truly “up par” for me, it’s not about an unbroken chain or a perfect system. It’s messier. It’s about showing up even when you don’t want to, even if it’s not every single day. It’s about picking up the pieces after the internet dies or you get sick. It’s about the trying, not just the ticking off of days. That “up par” feeling? It comes and goes. It’s not a fixed state you achieve by following a 21-day plan. It’s more about the overall trend, I think. And that’s my story with that little experiment.
