A Habit of Blogging

Yesterday morning, I had an eye-opening moment. As I was blogging about inspiring commercials, and almost done with the blog post so I didn't want to change it at that point, I realized that we were already a week into February, meaning that we had passed February 3rd, meaning that I had blogged for 365 consecutive days and had failed to note when we reached that milestone. Looking back at when I should have blogged about a full year of blogging, I see that I blogged about towels taking upon themselves our wetness, just as Christ took upon Himself our sins, so at least it was a decent blog post. But I think I want to blog about my first anniversary of blogging before another day goes by.

When I started blogging, I honestly didn't know when I would stop. I half-way figured that I'd lose steam eventually, or that I'd forget, and I did almost forget to blog several times toward the beginning, but since I had committed myself to blog daily, both to God and in public, I managed to blog each morning for a sufficient number of days that I didn't want to lose that streak. At first, I was blogging only because I had committed to blog, but now I've made a habit about it. Now I blog each morning because that's what I do.

A number of years ago, in an Institute class, I was given two sheets of paper covered in quotes about habits, how they can be "either the best of servants or the worst of masters," (Nathaniel Emmons) and "first we make our habits, then our habits make us," (John Dryden). I held on to those pages because I felt that they were important. Some people say that our habits form our character, and I think I agree. As I've said before, probably long ago (during my Identity Crisis blog post, perhaps?), "We are the kind of people who do the things we do," (Andrew Robarts). For example, if you ride your bike to work, regardless of the weather, then you're the kind of person that rides their bike to work, regardless of the weather. If you like to play computer games with lot's of complicated puzzles, then you're the kind of person that likes to play computer games with lots of complicated puzzles. In essence, we are what we do, and habits are things that we do so regularly that we start to do them automatically.

I've blogged so regularly that I've started doing it without needing to be reminded. I'm not sure how many months ago that started, but by now, blogging is part of my daily routine. I share usually-spiritual thoughts on my blog every morning, and now I have become (or am becoming) the kind of person that shares usually-spiritual thoughts on my blog every morning, and that sounds like a kind of person I'd like to be.