Goals on Vacation

     Let's talk about goals again for a minute.  As we've previously established, goals are hard!  That's only half of the truth though, because from conception to completion, goals are composed of many different stages that can be difficult to properly appreciate.  Now, imagine those goal complexities and throw them into the blender that is vacation; let me know how that turns out for you.
     The word vacation can really be interchanged with any another other words that result in some kind of disruption to an established routine.  People from some studies that I don't really know much about say that repeating a new habit for over 20 days makes it much easier to incorporate into your everyday life for every day after the 20th.  I have to agree that daily goals / habits do become easier after that point, and not to downplay how hard it is to get to that point, because sometimes it feels impossible, but it really does get easier, ridiculously so.  The next big hurdle comes when your string of success finds an interruption, after the 20+ day count resets back to the big ZERO.
     I'm writing about this now because I'm on one of the goal destroying vacations.  Everything has gone out the window: French, exercise, writing, water drinking, meditation.  You might think that these are nothing to cry about, but I used to be on a 30+ day streak for all of these things.  Knowing that I've gone from the road to an outlying success story back towards a tale of an ordinary failure really sucks.
     In a moment of self-doubt, I remember what it was like back in the 997 days in a row that I was able to do 10,000 steps a day without any problems.  In that same 997 days, Brianna was attempting to accomplish the same feat, and because of a much more demanding life schedule, was failing.  Her failures aren't significant in and of themselves, but the large gaps of time in-between each attempt are. What's harder than achieving a new daily/regular goal?  Picking yourself up, dusting that ass off, and giving it another go the very next day.
     Vacations and other routine disruptions do not have to cause goal and habit failures.  The difference between temporary failure and permanent failure is acceptance of the result.  I did climb a mountain, that has to be worth something right?  One down, infinity to go.

Yes, I still feel guilty about vacationing.  Yes, I still believe that I can make a difference.  No, I'm still not 100% sure how to do that, but I have some goals.  Let's talk again soon.