The Graphs are Always Greener

I'm motivated in odd ways, maybe it's just my personality.

This is my view of my own GitHub contributions graph. Ever since Justin Palmer debuted this graph, it's haunted me. This is a good thing, because I look at it now and I'm proud of it.

Every day for the last year, I've managed to commit at least once to one of my projects. If it looks a bit anemic towards the beginning of the year, GitHub only counts contributions to repositories you currently have access to. Once I left GitHub, my contributions went with it. It irks me since I'm still a part of that history, but understandable and poetic in a microcosmic fashion.

The dark green in the latter half? Hello! Base.

But I digress.

I'm a victim of data shame. Or rather, I have a phobia of breaking streaks. It's not that I don't break streaks, but I care about them enough that I'll go out of my way to keep them going. The fear of having a blank box in my contributions graph and having that "Current Streak" counter reset to zero was enough motivation for me to commit something first thing in the morning while waking up to the beauty that is Scotland, for example. Don't worry, Jen's gotten used to it. ;)

Since I began to notice this trend of shaming myself with data, I try to take advantage of it by purposely feeling shame and acting on it. Call it a unique form of mental sadism. Whether it's commits, my weight, or my kill/death ratio in Dota 2, it's seemed to work thus far.

Anyway, I guess it's time to shame myself into getting lunch.