Every newcomer gets this “Do a Ninety in Nintey” thrown at them.

What the hell, I thought, when I heard it, why not just say “Go to a meeting every day”? I still don’t know the real answer to that question, but I do know that doing something every day is a little scary. Feels like commitment, feels like “being good.”

Like flossing, or something your Mom would tell you to do.

But Ninety in Ninety. Sounds like reps with weights, working out in the gym, I thought, real tough. I liked the sound of it.

And it took a while to dawn on me that ninety days was actually just shy of three months which is a quarter (roughly) of a year, which is a goddamm long time to be doing anything.

There is something powerful about doing something every day. And pretty simple. The every-other-day or every-third-day or twice a week thing never really worked for me. Especially twice-a-week, which, I could tell you right off, speaking as a well trained statistician, would never work out as there are an odd number of days in a week, and so that is what, an average of every-three-point-five-days? Asymptotically, maybe, but how do you operationalize the point-five of a day?

And for the others, well, the difference between I did it yesterday and I did it the day before yesterday - be it practicing the piano, working out, or watering the plants - is a little difficult for me to make out. I start counting back days, trying to remember what I had for dinner, what I wore, who I talked to on the way out the door that day as a means of figuring it out. My memory is just not that good and I get sidetracked easily. Next thing you know I am digging in the back of the closet looking for a snapshot that will tell me which beach in Maine I camped at back when I still had the blue ‘67 ford pickup.

More importantly, not-quite every day opens the door for gaming, for bargaining, for making deals. Does two days in a row count for missing if we are doing every-other-day? Perhaps on the front end, but then, what on the back end? Are we on or off? Does this Monday make up for last Friday. If I am extra good, can I skip just this once? And on and on and on. If I were on the up-and-up about this, if the bargain was always fair, if I was always an honest dealer, then this might be OK. But, usually, the point of a Ninety in Ninety is that I am not an honest dealer, bargaining with fair, pure motives. If I were what would I be doing in a tin chair in a church basement drinking bad coffee?

And, on a deeper level, the bright shining beauty of Every Day is that these conversations are eliminated. If I am looking for a bit more peace, a bit of relief from the constant noise in my head, then Ninety in Ninety drops out a large chunk of internal discussion. Gone, just like that.

Ok, Maybe not. Maybe it just makes it clear that that the discussion I hear is just the usual smoke coming from the incessant excuse machine, rather than some kind of real planning, all that what how maybe when but if stuff being something that can be safely ignored.

Either way, there is the potential for a bit less self-involvement, for looking around with curiosity, and actually paying attention to whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing.

So, I want to be a writer. Well, what do writers do? Lots of things, I imagine, but, I would hazard a guess that the defining characteristic of a writer is writing. Maybe time for a Ninety in Ninety.