I went to an Orioles game once, in 1998. It was just a random, late-season game. I’m not a particular Orioles fan but my then-boyfriend, now-husband was a huge fan, and he got tickets, and we went. It was fun in the way that all low-stakes baseball games are fun. The Orioles were not in contention for anything that year, so no one other than the most die-hard fans cared if they won or lost that game, but it was a nice night to sit outside and drink beer and eat popcorn and watch baseball with middling levels of attention.
The game was not exciting but around the sixth inning, a buzz began to grow throughout the stadium. Cal Ripken Jr., who had the longest consecutive games played record in baseball history (a record that will likely stand forever) had not yet entered the game. Cal was nearing the end of his career and he was no longer starting every game as he did in his superstar early and mid career years. It wasn’t uncommon for him to sit out a few innings. But it was the bottom of the sixth inning, and Cal was nowhere to be seen. Was he just not going to play? Was he injured? Was he going to suddenly announce his retirement? The stadium grew more restless and the buzz grew louder, until Cal finally came out of the dugout at the end of the game, to formally announce what everyone had by then already figured out - he had decided that the streak had gone on long enough, and had chosen to sit out the game to end it that night.
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We had a busy weekend. The very last summer swim meet at our home pool - the B Division championship - followed by a quick road trip to Avalon NJ to watch my son compete in the Murray Mile Ocean Classic. He did very well in both things, and it was a lot of fun. But it was hectic. The meet didn’t end until 11:30. We got on the road by 12:30 but the already-horrendous summer Saturday traffic on I-95 was made much worse by two accidents, probably about 40 miles apart from one another. By the time we checked into our fleabag (oh my gosh so terrible more detail later) hotel and dropped our stuff off, we just barely had time to get to the beach to watch the race, which started at 6:30. My son finished the mile in very good time, beating all of his friends who had also caravaned to NJ following the meet, and scored age group honors among the men. My sister and her husband had come to the beach, and so we went out with them and had a very good time. We collapsed on our (terrible terrible terrible) hotel room beds at about 11 pm, and left at 8 the next morning, while all the young people (who stayed at the beach for the day) were still asleep. It wasn’t until we were about 20 miles inland that I realized that I hadn’t written a single word the previous day. It wasn’t intentional; I just forgot.
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I don’t know exactly how long my daily writing streak lasted. Looking at my blog entries, I see references to it going back as far as five years. So it was at least a five-year streak of daily writing. And when I say "daily," I MEAN daily. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, weekends and holidays included. I never missed a day until Saturday.
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Are you thinking that it's stupid and shallow and clueless and solipsistic to compare my small-time daily writing streak for which no records exist and which I can’t even prove really happened to one of the greatest baseball achievements of the 20th century? Of COURSE it is. If I wasn’t clueless and (sometimes) shallow and (occasionally) stupid and (a little bit) solipsistic, then what would I have had to write about for five years? How would I have sustained that streak for as long as I did?
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Well one way was to write everywhere and anywhere. Any time I had five or ten free minutes, I'd open Google Docs and just start writing. Now, for example - it’s 9:18 AM and I'm at work but our whole network is down and the IT people are trying to figure out what's wrong, and the rest of us are just sitting around waiting. Well, the rest of them are sitting around waiting. I'm using these spare ten minutes that might turn into hours to write about writing (or about failing to write). Saturday was just the last day of the old streak. It's Tuesday now and day 3 of a brand new streak. You can miss a day and still be a person who writes every day. See you in five years, give or take.
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