Week 6 - 75D/Does break = failure?
I’m sure some would make an argument for yes - taking a “break” from our challenge means we failed - but I’m going to make the argument for NO!
We planned our 5 day trip to Albuquerque a while ago, I’m not actually even sure if it was before our after the beginning of our challenge. But as I’m sure most people know…travel is a major disruptor. Your schedule, your eating habits, your access to water (and the bathroom)…all of that is majorly disrupted anytime you take a trip.
This was one of the hardest things about living full time on the road. Keeping any sort of regular schedule was almost impossible. Driving days and various routes, plans shifting because of things being closed or needing to arrive or leave on a certain day because of who knows what might be happening. That’s also one of the beauties of living on the road…the flexibility. You aren’t really supposed to be having a regular schedule.
But one of the toughest thing about this challenge is the every day-ness of it. Doing all these things every single day without a break is actually the challenge in and of itself. So when we knew that we would have two full 10+ hour driving days coming up we decided to take a 5 day break from the challenge and then just tack five days on to the end to get in the full 75 days.
That’s why I don’t consider it a failure that we took this break. Could we have continued to do the daily things…yes of course? We could have gotten up at 4am to do our walk and stretch before we started our 10 hour drive. Or we could have done it after we arrived, in a strange neighborhood that we weren’t familiar with. We did listen to an audio book so I’m guessing that counts for the book reading…but drinking a gallon of water? We would have had to stop in every single town on the way for the bathroom, extending our drive from 10 hours to 12!
One of the things Paul and I have discussed quite a bit since starting this challenge is that not having an end goal in mind affects us. We aren’t doing this to be able to complete a 10k at the end, or to loose 20lbs or be able to lift a higher amount of weight. I have done lots of difficult things in the past but they have always been tied to a bigger goal in mind that the daily activities would contribute to. Without that, the challenge feels relatively arbitrary. And in this world of “pics or it didn’t happen”….not having the accountability of social media also affects motivation. The mental challenge of doing something knowing you will get no recognition for it….that you are doing it solely for yourself…it’s sad to say but it just doesn’t feel as good. Of course not! We all want accolades and recognition for doing hard things. It may be sad but it is true.
Interestingly the one thing I didn’t take a break from while we were gone was staying off Instagram. Funny how it’s a little easier to NOT do something every day than it is to DO something. Traveling also doesn’t really make it harder to stay off of instagram either so it was not a problem to continue my hiatus from the app.
This challenge started on a Friday and we left for Alb on a Wednesday…so next weeks recap will also include a few days of our break before we will get back to it on Monday.
