The Chain is Broken!

When I first started at my new job in March, I had a problem finding places to eat lunch at. Most of my coworkers would "brown bag" in lunches from home, which I am not a fan of. (I usually don't even prepare my own dinner these days.) At my old jobs, there was a cafeteria in the building, which afforded everyone quick, easy access to good food. However, here I only knew of one restaurant in the area (Panera). I ate there the first day and thought, "Unless I do something, I am going to end up eating here every single day." So the next day, I got onto Google maps and searched for restaurants close to Panera, and I found a whole bunch on the same street. After about a month, I moved onto another street. And I kept going. Sometimes I would find an outdoor mall that would "last me" for an entire week by itself. Sometimes, the restaurant I found would be closed during lunch, and I would end up scrambling. Sometimes, time constraints would force me to pick a cheap fastfood restaurant. And sometimes, I would have a noon-meeting or some such that would feed me at work and preempt needing to find a place to eat. But every day that I went out, I found somewhere new.

That was in March. It's now November. I've eaten at well over 100 restaurants. I never would have guessed I could last this long. I probably could keep going, too, if I wanted to utilize downtown restaurants, but I hate dealing with parking and with long lines, so I finally threw in the towel. To commemorate it, I even ate at that first Panera that I started out with. Overall, I would say the whole project was a huge success--I had to make continuous effort to keep that streak going, and I learned about a lot of restaurants that I didn't know existed and tried a lot of things I probably wouldn't have otherwise in the process. I highly recommend everyone try a similar project where they push themselves to do a little something new continuously over a long time period.