730-Day Streak

One year ago today, I blogged about the 365-Day Streak I had apparently gotten in a game on my phone. At the time, my plan had been to use that game to remind me to read my scriptures and say my prayers every day for a year, so that today I could blog about my 730-Day Streak.

Unfortunately, I missed a few days. If I had to guess, I missed about two months worth of days because right now, my phone game says I'm going strong on a 671-day streak. I don't think it knows what a "streak" is. But I suppose that's for the best because, if it did know what a streak is, I would have broken it 60-ish disappointing times by now.

Still, I probably shouldn't kick myself too hard for that. What I really need to do is to pick myself up, dust myself off, and keep trying, just like another game I've started playing recently: Alto's Odyssey.

In Alto's Odyssey, the sequel to the snowboarding game Alto's Adventure, the player "snowboards" down an infinite sand dune, jumping over rocks and chasms to keep sandboarding as long as possible. When the player crashes or falls into a chasm, they can revive, but they can only revive a few times each run, so far as I've learned.

However, the game does have a Zen Mode, where the player can keep the run going as long as they want. The Zen Mode still has rocks and chasms, but the player can revive as many times as they want.

It's a lot like life. It lasts a long time -- so long that we're bound to make several, if not countless mistakes along the way. Yet, our run doesn't end every time we trip over a rock. Instead, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going.

I suppose this is all to say that which has already been said so succinctly: "It doesn't matter how many times we fall. What matters is how many times we get back up." Maybe it doesn't matter that I broke my "730-day streak" about five dozen times. Maybe what matters is that I said my prayers and read my scriptures about 300 times, and counting. Prayers don't need to be consecutive to be beneficial.

So, no, I didn't pray and read my scriptures every day for the past year, but what I'm going to do is pick myself up, dust myself off, and keep going.