If you’re paying close attention, it might look like I skipped a day. I didn’t. The days for these posts were off from the days for my 108 check-ins. Now they’re synced up. :)

Working through the Internal Family Systems prompts gave me some emotionally heavy days. Lots of things are getting unearthed, and lots of new connections in my mind are being made. Saturdays (and Sundays) are already a little off from Monday to Friday because I play Helldivers 2 in the mornings with my family. Sometimes I get my morning routine done first, and other times I don’t. I didn’t go to sleep until 3 am last night, so today was a “don’t” morning. When that happens, I usually jump on my morning routine right when we’re done playing, but not today. Today I thought, “Maybe I’ll break my fast early? What is there to snack on?” I found a bag of Twizzlers my wife brought back from Canada that doesn’t exist anymore. Ate some pizza from last night and… passed out.

When I woke up around 6:30 pm, I went and did my paper and pen journaling (that was actually an interesting topic that I could have talked about instead… lol), went for a walk, and now I’m here typing!

Today was definitely an “off” day for me, but I’ll still get all my routines done. What I would now label as an “off” day would have been labeled an “on” day this time last year. Perhaps this is the insight from this post. The “off” days are a better measurement for how well your habits and routines are functioning than the “on” days. Both the depth of the “off” and how many days the “off” runs. I suppose another insight is that, assuming your intent is pure and you’re doing the best that you can, there are no “off” days… Time to update the title and remove “When”…

I’m 24 108-day cycles deep (8 years). The VAST majority of those days have been “off” days. I’d have streaks of “on” days here and there, and one cycle I ran up a mountain every day for 108 days, but easily 80% or more of those days have been “off” days. With pure internet and doing the best that I could, now I’m at like 95% “on” and that 5% that’s “off” is still pretty much on, like today.

I kind of broke my rule by going to fetch this, but not entirely. I was just going to end the post there, so now this is… bonus post. lol I tried to find the source of this, and this appears to be the post that popularized it. In there, he has a link to an even older post from a site that no longer exists. Anyhow, that graph has a lot of truth in it, but I have a similar graph on my 108s page that is based on my real-life data.

All of the red, yellow, and blue are “off” cycles, and the bulk of the days in them are going to be “off” days. I’d argue that most of the days in the green are also “off” as well, especially compared to cycles 16, 18, and 20. 20, the last cycle, is the first cycle I experience all “on” days. Anyhow, I saw that success graph WAY before I started the 108. I was also already a master at squiggly success well before seeing that graph (being SUPER bipolar can have that effect). Anyhow, I knew success for me was gonna be hella messy because it had been for so long. I guess it’s cool being at a place where things are smoothing out, and I have the data and visuals to show it.