Juliebarkley returns to the land of habits

[juliebarkley]

***Real challenge to be posted soon***

 

I'm starting this thread so I don't forget or put it off tomorrow when something more fun shows up.

 

New year means reviewing the goals of the past year - what worked, what didn't, and what should be added, changed, or deleted.

 

I also turn 40 this challenge, so it's a good time to reflect on where I am in life, and where I want to be headed.

 

But this is all too much for my poor tired brain right now. Tomorrow.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

I turn 40 this summer. It was really cool meeting you in the Discord video chat last night.

[Epsilonte]

Here to cheer on you, whatever you might do this challenge!

[Jarric]

Look forward to seeing what this challenge will be.

[JuiceeTarget]

Lets go!

[Mad Hatter]

Looking forward to see what this challenge brings!

[juliebarkley]

15 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I turn 40 this summer. It was really cool meeting you in the Discord video chat last night.

Thanks, you too! I see you posting around the forums, but our paths rarely cross, it seems. You jammy shirt was very fetching.

 

14 hours ago, Epsilonte said:

Here to cheer on you, whatever you might do this challenge!

Thanks, Epsilonte!

 

13 hours ago, Jarric said:

Look forward to seeing what this challenge will be.

Me too!

 

10 hours ago, GoodDoug said:

Lets go!

Hold your horses; I'm working on it.

 

9 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Looking forward to see what this challenge brings!

As am I. As am I.

 

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Confession time. The create-a-thread-the-night-before-to-force-yourself-to-work-on-it technique didn't work. I purposely ignored it all day. I just have not been in the mood for the introspection required for the big goal revising. Maybe I'm making it out to be harder than it is, but right now it feels like a huge, overwhelming thing, with so so many things that I want to accomplish (or feel like I have to) that it is all just too much. Too much.

 

Okay breathe. This is what the challenges are all about, right? Taking big huge intimidating goals and breaking them down into pieces that at least seem doable at the time? Come on now, I have literal years of experience with this by now, and an annual goal list from last year already in place. I can do this. Breathe.

 

So I might not get done tonight. What I will get done, is starting a battle log to hold the big goals I have already written (and links to past challenges, because why not?). The LibreOffice document I have is kind of clunky, and I've been arranging it by the month, which is just foolish as clearly I arrange my life goals by challenge periods in the real world. So first step is to figure out the approximate challenge dates, then copy the info from last year over, look at what I had on the docket for this year, and adjust from there. Okay, sounds like a doable plan. I'll get this all sorted by the actual challenge start, I promise.

[WhiteGhost]

20 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I also turn 40 this challenge

 

If you don't get your challenge up today you can just claim that you forgot.  It's a legit old person excuse  

[Scaly Freak]

12 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Confession time. The create-a-thread-the-night-before-to-force-yourself-to-work-on-it technique didn't work. I purposely ignored it all day. I just have not been in the mood for the introspection required for the big goal revising. Maybe I'm making it out to be harder than it is, but right now it feels like a huge, overwhelming thing, with so so many things that I want to accomplish (or feel like I have to) that it is all just too much. Too much.

 

Is the introspection and the big goal revising mandatory right now? Can they wait until you feel less overwhelmed? Alternatively, can you do it in smaller chunks?

 

Using the New Year for goal revising is really very arbitrary, if you think about it. if we have to do it by the calendar, we can just as easily use our birthday, a religious holiday, or an anniversary that means a lot to us. It doesn't have to be right at the first week of the calendar year.

 

Something to consider.  

[Mad Hatter]

I was going to ask the same thing as Scaly! You could even make your challenge goal to set some goals if you want to make sure it stays on your mind.  

Personally I've decided to celebrate Persian new year this year instead and hopefully I'll be more ready by then.  @KB Girl is aiming for Chinese new year haha. It's all good.

[Epsilonte]

I second what Scaly Freak and Mad Hatter said.  

Also it doesn't have to be new goals. If you had some older challenge goals you enjoyed, why not do these again?  

[Jean]

I'm with Scaly Freak, Mad Hatter and Epsilonte. I've had times in my life where the only stated goal was literally "walk 5 minutes every day". These times give my mind some space to breath and expand.

 

You don't have to design a master plan to change your life upside down today, you just have to keep yourself on the way enough that you'll get ready to get your things and go on the adventure when you'll be ready for it.

 

Have fun, take care, scale things as down as they need to. Growing buds, nurturing them and giving them nutrients to make them grow is the best way forward that I know.

[Jarric]

Just chiming in to agree with everyone else. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, your probably better off having a challenge than putting off writing the perfect goals.

[Renate]

I have nothing to add. 👌 You'll figure it out. Take care of yourself in any way you can in the mean time. 😊 Feel free to brainstorm/vent as needed.

[sarakingdom]

Ditto all this. I'm a big advocate of tackling the actual problem I  front of you, rather than what "should" be the next problem. If that problem is "just keep myself from quitting" or "figure out how to give a damn" or "figure out what I want", that's the next problem, not upping my reps or whatever.

[juliebarkley]

On 1/2/2021 at 12:58 AM, WhiteGhost said:

 

If you don't get your challenge up today you can just claim that you forgot.  It's a legit old person excuse  

That's what I hear from my teenager on the regular! I shall have to remember that excuse for my approaching dotage. But how does it work if I forget to remember that I can claim to forget?

 

23 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

Is the introspection and the big goal revising mandatory right now? Can they wait until you feel less overwhelmed? Alternatively, can you do it in smaller chunks?

 

Using the New Year for goal revising is really very arbitrary, if you think about it. if we have to do it by the calendar, we can just as easily use our birthday, a religious holiday, or an anniversary that means a lot to us. It doesn't have to be right at the first week of the calendar year.

 

Something to consider.  

You're right. I'm going to do it in smaller chunks. It's just a lot of process all at once with a deadline, and the actual processing is important but not urgent (a la Eisenhower matrix).

 

I am using New Years for two reasons: that's what I did last year, so it's kind of built in as the review time; and because I'll actually remember it in future.

 

21 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I was going to ask the same thing as Scaly! You could even make your challenge goal to set some goals if you want to make sure it stays on your mind.  

Personally I've decided to celebrate Persian new year this year instead and hopefully I'll be more ready by then.  @KB Girl is aiming for Chinese new year haha. It's all good.

I was just thinking that as I worked on the battle log. I think I will make the review part of the challenge this time round.

 

20 hours ago, Epsilonte said:

I second what Scaly Freak and Mad Hatter said.  

Also it doesn't have to be new goals. If you had some older challenge goals you enjoyed, why not do these again?  

Y'all are so smart. I never remember my past challenge goals, but reviewing where I have succeeded and failed for the past year has given me some ideas.

 

14 hours ago, Jean said:

I'm with Scaly Freak, Mad Hatter and Epsilonte. I've had times in my life where the only stated goal was literally "walk 5 minutes every day". These times give my mind some space to breath and expand.

 

You don't have to design a master plan to change your life upside down today, you just have to keep yourself on the way enough that you'll get ready to get your things and go on the adventure when you'll be ready for it.

 

Have fun, take care, scale things as down as they need to. Growing buds, nurturing them and giving them nutrients to make them grow is the best way forward that I know.

Unless I felt like my life was falling apart or I was desperate to just get at least one habit going right for me, doing an unchallenge challenge would make me more stressed, I think. I think I've only ever done it once, at a bad time for me. This is not a bad time. Just the realization that some events out of my control are coming ever nearer was flagging up the importance of some of my planned goals and stress around them. Add on a bunch of other things I really do need to get done as far before that unknown deadline hits as possible and it is overwhelming to think about. But you're right, it doesn't have to be all at once, and it doesn't have to be today. I'll try to do it a bit at a time during the challenge.

 

10 hours ago, Jarric said:

Just chiming in to agree with everyone else. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, your probably better off having a challenge than putting off writing the perfect goals.

Damn. Yes. I am doing this, aren't I?

 

5 hours ago, Athena said:

I have nothing to add. 👌 You'll figure it out. Take care of yourself in any way you can in the mean time. 😊 Feel free to brainstorm/vent as needed.

I always do! I'm an optimist at heart, really.

 

3 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

Ditto all this. I'm a big advocate of tackling the actual problem I  front of you, rather than what "should" be the next problem. If that problem is "just keep myself from quitting" or "figure out how to give a damn" or "figure out what I want", that's the next problem, not upping my reps or whatever.

This "figure out what I want long-term" is kind of the next problem. I just really don't want to do it. I run two ways: I either have phenomenal trouble making myself do the work, or I throw myself so completely into the work that I abandon all else. Right now the planning is in the former category. I'm pretty sure I know what I want for my challenge though, so there's step one I guess.

 

[juliebarkley]

Goals. Yes. I have goals. But what I need right now are habits.

 

Anyone who has spent any time on my challenges has watched me struggle with habits. I can be going so well, for a long time, and then when I need to work on a goal, I abandon everything and have to start all over. That is where I am right now. The last couple of months I basically just put all my hard-won habits in a heap and dynamited them. Not good.

 

There is hope, however. Since the habits have been built in the past, I feel like the muscle memory for them is still there. My brain has turned them off, but they should turn back on more easily than building a whole new set of habits from scratch. Should. In theory.

 

This challenge, I am going to (mostly) work on reviving habits that have lapsed, with a few new things for fun because fun is fun.

 

STR: Continue with the exercise program that I am doing, 3x per week. This only lapsed in the last week or two, so this should be easy.

DEX: On non-exercise days, do the floor parkour routine that @WhiteGhost gave me like two challenges ago. (Which I had opened in a tab, but have now lost in tab wasteland and will have to dig up again.) It's short, and since my son wants to do some exercise every day, there might even be outside accountability. The hope is that doing something daily at a consistent time will be easier than trying to remember which days are on and which off. And also, fun variety.

CON: Would really like to actually walk every day again. It's good for my mental health. The weather has actually been half decent too; the problem has been that something's gone wrong with my boots and they now give me blisters, so walking has been tricky.

INT: Reading every day. I'm actually doing this - not as much as I'd like, but it is happening. So let's keep it happening.

Also, reread the notes I wrote way back when about habits, how to build them, and how to make them stick. There are steps I've not been doing, like planning for what to do when you fail to do the habit, that I think would help me right now.

WIS: One prayer a day. Let's make it either dhuhr or isha, since that's what I was doing before. One day I'll make it to five. One day.

Also, working on the long-term planning. That's not a habit, but over the course of a month I should surely be able to pull this off, regardless of how much my mind tries to pull me away like a wayward dog on a leash.

CHA: I'm trying to get a French chat going with some work people. Schedule and show up for at least one of those.

Occupational proficiencies: Warm up and practice every day. While I would like to get back to doing more, this is small, achievable, and actually helps a lot with skill improvement.

Arts & Tool proficiencies: Leaving off the big goal organizing/decluttering this round, as it will destroy my habits. Going to work on the fiddle instead! Pick up the fiddle every day and do something. I have stuff to learn before the playing can happen. Right now I am learning how to hold it correctly.

Language proficiencies: At least one lesson in one language on Duo every day. Once I'm going I'll do more, but one on a busy day is still doable.

 

Also need to rewrite the work schedule, and I should be able to put these habits in my calendar to come up as alerts on my phone. That helps me ever so much to remember what I'm supposed to be doing, even if I do ignore them a lot and do the things at different times.

 

Everything else is bonus goals. I will mention any interesting bonus goals. Also any not so interesting ones, because my life is not exactly a thriller novel and much of it is not very exciting.

 

And now I shall reward my challenge goal writing with popcorn.

[Epsilonte]

1 hour ago, juliebarkley said:

CON: Would really like to actually walk every day again. It's good for my mental health. The weather has actually been half decent too; the problem has been that something's gone wrong with my boots and they now give me blisters, so walking has been tricky.

 

Yay goals!!

Have you tried using different/thicker/thinner socks with the boots? Might help. Daily walks are such a nice habit to have!  

 

Have fun building those habits up again, you can do this!!

[sarakingdom]

28 minutes ago, Epsilonte said:

Have you tried using different/thicker/thinner socks with the boots? Might help. Daily walks are such a nice habit to have!  

 

I think the old hiking trick is two pairs of socks, so the rubbing happens between the socks, not between the socks and you.

[Mad Hatter]

5 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Arts & Tool proficiencies: Leaving off the big goal organizing/decluttering this round, as it will destroy my habits. 

Great realization! 

 

Enjoy the popcorn!  

[Cheetah]

Nice goals!  Happy Challenge!

[Scaly Freak]

9 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Arts & Tool proficiencies: Leaving off the big goal organizing/decluttering this round, as it will destroy my habits. Going to work on the fiddle instead! Pick up the fiddle every day and do something. I have stuff to learn before the playing can happen. Right now I am learning how to hold it correctly.

 

Remember to keep your shoulders down and your arms relaxed  

[Jarric]

Nice goals, looks like a fun challenge.

 

9 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

 

I think the old hiking trick is two pairs of socks, so the rubbing happens between the socks, not between the socks and you.

 

^yeah, this usually works for me. If not, you can tape up your feet micropore tape (I think that's the right word), and go with the two pairs of socks over that.

[juliebarkley]

10 hours ago, Epsilonte said:

Have you tried using different/thicker/thinner socks with the boots? Might help. Daily walks are such a nice habit to have!  

9 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

I think the old hiking trick is two pairs of socks, so the rubbing happens between the socks, not between the socks and you.

50 minutes ago, Jarric said:

^yeah, this usually works for me. If not, you can tape up your feet micropore tape (I think that's the right word), and go with the two pairs of socks over that.

I have only thicker socks, because Canada is cold, and because I really don't like socks so I only wear them in boots. I lack full feeling in the foot that is rubbing due to a broken heel, so I  can't always tell that it has been, say, bleeding, until I take the boot off. It feels like the back of the heel was dented in in storage when I'm wearing it, but I can't feel anything unusual when it's off. Maybe they're just too small now. I have another pair I can dig out to try and then I suppose I'll know for sure if I need to shop for new ones.

 

10 hours ago, Epsilonte said:

Have fun building those habits up again, you can do this!!

3 hours ago, Cheetah said:

Nice goals!  Happy Challenge!

57 minutes ago, Jarric said:

Nice goals, looks like a fun challenge.

Thanks for the well wishes! Happy challenge to you all as well!

 

6 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Great realization! 

 

Enjoy the popcorn!  

I have been trying to make goals and habits play nice for a long time with minimal success. And popcorn is life.

 

2 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Remember to keep your shoulders down and your arms relaxed  

Says someone who learned as a child, or who still plays? Mine currently has neither shoulder nor chin rest, and the book I'm using assumes you have both. Pretty sure no one in my family used either and they were invented later than the instrument itself, so it must be possible. I'll need the internets to figure out how.

 

[Scaly Freak]

32 minutes ago, juliebarkley said:

Says someone who learned as a child, or who still plays? 

 

Someone who learned the cello as a child and watched enough violinists to draw the conclusion those things apply to that instrument as well.

 

If you tense up your neck and shoulders you will end up playing with your shoulders pulled upwards while you play. That's anti-ergonomics and cause for injuries over time.