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Jan. 2nd, 2020 10:58 pmIiiiiiit's a real day! It's the first real day of the New Year, because going to parties and driving forever is all very liminal-space. Going to work and interacting with students is much more solid.
I don't _really_ make New Years Resolutions these days, in that honestly the crossover from December to January is not actually as specific to my life as the crossover from August to September (or more accurately, from summer to the school year). Plus, I've been trying hard over the past many years to get my brain into the idea of "you do not have to wait for a significant moment to try and make a change" which means if I think of a resolution, I attempt to start implementing it immediately, rather than holding onto it and waiting.
That being said, all the hullabaloo about the new decade and whatnot does put one into a contemplative state of mind. Plus, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about Doing The Work and getting my brain in shape, so resolutions are just sortof an extension of that. So here are some things I've been working on recently:
*In 2019, I wrote at least 750words in every single 24-hour period (approximately 6am-6am). This is *great* for me sorting my brain, and really really lovely for long-term memory storage and reflection. I explicitly do NOT expect myself to write every day in 2020 (Pinewoods, those nights where I don't get around to it and would force myself awake at three in the morning to write, sometimes life just gets busy) but I do want to carry that writing energy through into this year. I'd be happy with 300+ days of writing this year!
*One of the side-effect great things about the above is that it proves to my fuck-ass ADHD nonsensebrain that I can actually commit to Doing Something every day. It also verifies my suspicion that peer pressure from past personas is really fucking effective for me --I can't break my streak today, because I'll be disappointing the 390 days of past selves who kept it going! I vaguely recall some sort of "chaining" website or organizational idea OSLT from five years ago, and wanna see if I can utilize something like that to help me build better habits.
*The specific one I'm working on right now is getting up effectively. My alarm goes off, I hit snooze because of course I do, and I go back to bed because of course I do, but I'm working hard on then getting back out of bed after 3-5 minutes --before the alarm goes off again! Call it weaning myself off the snooze alarm. It carries a bonus of "if you really routinely run up a sleep deficit as you are wont to do, you will not be able to resist actually falling back asleep but it won't be restful because snooze so actually try and sleep enough or something". Anyways, I've successfully done this for about 12 days straight now --all the days I was in Dallas (and Philly) I actually got up with my alarm, and I did it again today! Yay me!
(I am not setting _any_ other restrictions on when I get up. Like, yeah, I have to get up at about six if I wanna be at work on time, and 8 or 9 on the weekend to get to bells, but I'm not gonna say "oh, there's nothing on the schedule, need to make sure I'm up by 8:30 regardless!)
*Related to chaining and habits and patterns, I'm trying to reintroduce the POWER HOUR into my life, mostly through using the app Forest. Forest lets you plant trees that require your phone to spend ALL ITS FOCUS on growing the tree for a pre-set amount of time. If you interrupt the tree growing in any way (say...any of the eight thousand distractions on offer with the phone) your tree TRAGICALLY DIES and it's very sad. Later, you can look back on your forest of healthy little bushes and trees from the past day-week-month-year and see how much time you've managed to spend away from the phone!
The official rules of POWER HOUR state that the time need not be productive, it just needs to not be electronic. Nap, read, draw, flop, cook, clean, grade...any of that is a-okay! Just not using the phone or lappy.
*Also I brought #AccountabilityClub back to twitter today, and had the Good Idea of setting up a little three-option poll to let other people decide what I worked on. I have no idea if this is going to be a good thing to try in the long run, but it was kinda charming to have the added accountability bonus of "I _have_ to unpack my bags from traveling, that's what the People Of Twitter said I should do and I don't wanna disappoint them". If you wanna join #AccountabilityClub all you have to do is make posts (on any social media, idgaf) with that hashtag and then later come back and say you did the thing!
There's probably other stuff, but that "trying to sleep more" is _real_. The secret I am pretty sure I have figured out but am not good at implementing is this: If I sleep enough, I will be more able to regulate my attention and not get as endlessly "stuck" in mindless phone games or what-have-you. Therefore, even though I am losing time (my biggest objection to sleep) I am actually gaining useful time, because I am more able to do things that feel positive (including non-work things like creating or consuming art) and I am not losing all my time to the phonebox and lack of self-regulation.
It sounds good, right? Maybe I can at least placebo-convince my brain it is a good thing. At any rate, if I go to bed nowish I can have seven! whole! hours! before I have to go to work and that's keen. We'll figure out the side hustle of "ugh, I have to do some grading and prep" when I get to it.
Hope yinzes are well! Do you have things you're working on right now (completely regardless of the new year) that you wanna tell me about?
~Sor
MOOP!
I don't _really_ make New Years Resolutions these days, in that honestly the crossover from December to January is not actually as specific to my life as the crossover from August to September (or more accurately, from summer to the school year). Plus, I've been trying hard over the past many years to get my brain into the idea of "you do not have to wait for a significant moment to try and make a change" which means if I think of a resolution, I attempt to start implementing it immediately, rather than holding onto it and waiting.
That being said, all the hullabaloo about the new decade and whatnot does put one into a contemplative state of mind. Plus, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about Doing The Work and getting my brain in shape, so resolutions are just sortof an extension of that. So here are some things I've been working on recently:
*In 2019, I wrote at least 750words in every single 24-hour period (approximately 6am-6am). This is *great* for me sorting my brain, and really really lovely for long-term memory storage and reflection. I explicitly do NOT expect myself to write every day in 2020 (Pinewoods, those nights where I don't get around to it and would force myself awake at three in the morning to write, sometimes life just gets busy) but I do want to carry that writing energy through into this year. I'd be happy with 300+ days of writing this year!
*One of the side-effect great things about the above is that it proves to my fuck-ass ADHD nonsensebrain that I can actually commit to Doing Something every day. It also verifies my suspicion that peer pressure from past personas is really fucking effective for me --I can't break my streak today, because I'll be disappointing the 390 days of past selves who kept it going! I vaguely recall some sort of "chaining" website or organizational idea OSLT from five years ago, and wanna see if I can utilize something like that to help me build better habits.
*The specific one I'm working on right now is getting up effectively. My alarm goes off, I hit snooze because of course I do, and I go back to bed because of course I do, but I'm working hard on then getting back out of bed after 3-5 minutes --before the alarm goes off again! Call it weaning myself off the snooze alarm. It carries a bonus of "if you really routinely run up a sleep deficit as you are wont to do, you will not be able to resist actually falling back asleep but it won't be restful because snooze so actually try and sleep enough or something". Anyways, I've successfully done this for about 12 days straight now --all the days I was in Dallas (and Philly) I actually got up with my alarm, and I did it again today! Yay me!
(I am not setting _any_ other restrictions on when I get up. Like, yeah, I have to get up at about six if I wanna be at work on time, and 8 or 9 on the weekend to get to bells, but I'm not gonna say "oh, there's nothing on the schedule, need to make sure I'm up by 8:30 regardless!)
*Related to chaining and habits and patterns, I'm trying to reintroduce the POWER HOUR into my life, mostly through using the app Forest. Forest lets you plant trees that require your phone to spend ALL ITS FOCUS on growing the tree for a pre-set amount of time. If you interrupt the tree growing in any way (say...any of the eight thousand distractions on offer with the phone) your tree TRAGICALLY DIES and it's very sad. Later, you can look back on your forest of healthy little bushes and trees from the past day-week-month-year and see how much time you've managed to spend away from the phone!
The official rules of POWER HOUR state that the time need not be productive, it just needs to not be electronic. Nap, read, draw, flop, cook, clean, grade...any of that is a-okay! Just not using the phone or lappy.
*Also I brought #AccountabilityClub back to twitter today, and had the Good Idea of setting up a little three-option poll to let other people decide what I worked on. I have no idea if this is going to be a good thing to try in the long run, but it was kinda charming to have the added accountability bonus of "I _have_ to unpack my bags from traveling, that's what the People Of Twitter said I should do and I don't wanna disappoint them". If you wanna join #AccountabilityClub all you have to do is make posts (on any social media, idgaf) with that hashtag and then later come back and say you did the thing!
There's probably other stuff, but that "trying to sleep more" is _real_. The secret I am pretty sure I have figured out but am not good at implementing is this: If I sleep enough, I will be more able to regulate my attention and not get as endlessly "stuck" in mindless phone games or what-have-you. Therefore, even though I am losing time (my biggest objection to sleep) I am actually gaining useful time, because I am more able to do things that feel positive (including non-work things like creating or consuming art) and I am not losing all my time to the phonebox and lack of self-regulation.
It sounds good, right? Maybe I can at least placebo-convince my brain it is a good thing. At any rate, if I go to bed nowish I can have seven! whole! hours! before I have to go to work and that's keen. We'll figure out the side hustle of "ugh, I have to do some grading and prep" when I get to it.
Hope yinzes are well! Do you have things you're working on right now (completely regardless of the new year) that you wanna tell me about?
~Sor
MOOP!