The pandemic feels like a lifetime ago, and yet I can tell you exactly how long it has been: 2,000 days. I know this not because of science, or history, or the passage of time, but because on March 1, 2020, I started a streak.
A walking streak.
Every single day since then—through shutdowns and reopenings, through new jobs, new routines, travel, stress, exhaustion, weather that felt like it was designed to break me—I have walked at least 10,000 steps.
Two thousand days.
I didn’t set out to do this. At the beginning, it was something to do during the pandemic. It also protected my sanity. Walking was the chance to get out of the house and leave everything else behind. Ten thousand steps a day had long been the baseline, ever since I started wearing a fitness tracker. Twenty-two thousand steps was the dream. (For reference, that’s about ten miles a day, or the equivalent of pacing nervously during a seven-hour baseball game.)
The first year was easy. I averaged nearly 22,000 steps per day. The second was manageable, still averaging nearly 20,000 steps per day. But the last three were harder. I changed careers. Time shrank. The joy of the walk, once as natural as breathing, sometimes felt like another appointment on an already crowded calendar.
Quick aside here: if you’ve never experienced the low-grade panic of watching your fitness tracker show 9,976 steps at 11:57 p.m., you haven’t lived. That’s when you find yourself walking in pajama pants around the kitchen island like a lunatic, praying the neighbors can’t see through the window.
What kept me going? Partly, the dog. (She doesn’t negotiate. She knows when it’s walk time, and if I try to skip, she looks at me like I just canceled Christmas.) Partly, the number itself. The bigger the streak grew, the harder it was to let it go. You don’t walk 1,732 consecutive days just to stop there.
And now we’re at 2,000.
I should say this: I am impressed with myself. I don’t usually say things like that, but persistence deserves a little horn-tooting. If I can string together 2,000 days of anything—walking, writing, flossing—maybe I’m not as undisciplined as I sometimes think.
Of course, streaks end. Technology fails. Bodies get sick. Life interrupts. At some point, a day will come when the step counter doesn’t make it to 10,000, and I’ll have to deal with it.
But not yet.
The next goal is December 30, 2025—Day 2,131. If you’re a baseball fan, you know why. (That’s the number Cal Ripken Jr. reached when he passed Lou Gehrig in consecutive games played. If you’re not a fan, know this: it’s persistence at a mythical scale.) After that, the big one: 2,633 days, when Ripken’s streak itself comes into view on or about February 6, 2027.
Will I make it to 2,633? I don’t know. The streak doesn’t give me the same joy it once did, and some days it feels like one more box to check. But every morning, the dog is there, stretching in anticipation, eyes pathetically pleading. And every morning, I lace up my shoes.
Sireadh Toileachas 