Coasting through life

I've become obsessed with the feature in my new Toyota Corolla that measures the car's average miles per gallon.  I'll save for another day how it came to be that at the very point in my life when I always planned to trade up from my old Toyota Camry to a car more suited to my age and professional status, I ended up with the Corolla (let's just say it started with my wife's desire that the kids learn to drive a manual transmission, and ended with me rolling up to work every day in a sporty little number you'd expect a 17 year old to be driving).  But I digress. 
 
Every time I fill up my car, I reset the average MPG feature and then proceed to coast as much as I can to my house (I strategically pick a gas station that's elevated above my home) all the while checking the average MPG guage to see how high I can get it.  The other day I made it to 82.3 MPG, which brought me just short of the quarter mile lane I have to drive uphill to get the car home.  My impulse was to walk home -- just park the car their and leave it forever in it's elevated state.  It's the same feeling I used to get when I found a good parking spot on the street in Manhattan.  Why can't life just stop there?  Why the relentless forward progression of time?  Is it too much to just let me enjoy that moment for say, a year or two?  I concluded it was too much, and proceeded to dutifully drive my car up the lane, which promptly dropped the average MPG to 50.3 -- still an impressive number and one I could fully enjoy intil the next morning when my daily commute regressed the car to it's mean MPG of 33.7.  Sad to watch my high numbers slowly slip away.
 
My relationship with my car's MPG feature has caused me to reflect on the best approach as to when we should take stock of things in our lives.  Should we watch the guage constantly and experience every high and low?  Or should we check the guage after every tank of gas?  Or maybe only twice a year?  It would certainly be reasonable, and probably superior, for me to check the average MPG after every tank of gas, look for trends, and see if I can implement any new driving habits that could move the needle from 33.7 to 33.9.  Is the thrill of the temporary and artificial 82.3 worth the agony of the sharp drop to 50.3 and slower drop to 33.7?  Probably not.  Having reflected on this, I think next time I'll fill up at a station below my house, suffer the temporary abysmal numbers as I climb home, but then bask in the steady climb toward my car's true potential -- 33.7 average MPG.