On Showing Up Every Day

Consistency is the underrated superpower. Not motivation, not talent — just showing up, especially when you don’t feel like it.

I know this because I failed at it over and over again, publicly, in a GitHub repository, for years.

The GitHub Kata

In 2017 I was working a government IT job — what I called my “Slave Wage job” — and I wanted out. I wanted to code for a living. So I created a challenge for myself: push a commit to GitHub every single day for 30 days in a row.

Sounds simple. It wasn’t.

I missed days because the hot water heater broke and it threw off my morning routine. I missed days because of Thanksgiving. I missed days because friends visited, or I got sick, or the weekends swallowed me whole. Every time I missed a day I had to start the count over — Day 1 of 30, again.

The entries from those stretches are raw:

“I am so sick of restarting. It is so hard to commit and complete this task.”

“That really fucking FUCKING sucks. I can do the work but my commitment isn’t there or something. I just want to cry.”

I bought absinthe one night after losing a streak I was sure I’d kept. I wasn’t going on a bender — just taking the edge off of failing at something that felt so simple.

Coffee and Code

The breakthrough came when I stopped relying on willpower and linked the habit to something I already did every day without fail: make coffee.

Before the french press was done, I pushed to GitHub. That was the rule. Suddenly the habit had an anchor. Morning is before the world starts demanding pieces of you. It is before the fog of other people’s problems rolls in. It is the only time that reliably belongs to you.

I also started the Berkeley JavaScript Dojo (BJD) — a community meetup built around the same philosophy. Show up. Practice the craft. Repeat. Even when no one RSVPs. Even when you’re the only one there. I hosted the meetup for months before the room started filling up.

What 30 Days Actually Feels Like

On December 24, 2017 — after starting the challenge back in February — I finally hit Day 30 of 30 without a break.

I had been to WaffleJS, SF Node, OWASP, and MongoDB meetups. I had worked through React, Vue, Angular, MongoDB, TypeScript, and NativeScript tutorials. I had run community meetups, MC’d events, and taught others how to do the same kata. And I had failed at the “30 days in a row” challenge so many times I lost count.

But I finished.

“I didn’t let myself get down and stay down. There is another similar challenge to this called the #100 day coding challenge. I have more respect for the people that post under that tag because it is difficult to do something for so many days in a row.”

Earning that first “white belt” felt significant — not because the commits were impressive, but because completing it meant I could commit to something hard and see it through.

The Real Practice

The daily GitHub post was never really about GitHub. It was about proving to myself — every single day — that I was serious about the life I was building toward.

It was also about honesty. The journal is public. Every failure is timestamped. There is no way to pretend you showed up when you didn’t. That kind of accountability, uncomfortable as it is, sharpens you.

By 2019 I was mentoring others through the same kata, watching them struggle with the same weekends and distractions, cheering them through their own Day 1s.

The mat will be there. The blank commit will be there. The question is always the same: are you?