New Year, New Habits
Bad Habits by FIDLAR. Yup, just for the name, but as always, great track.
Is it a few weeks late? Yup. Does it matter? Nah. On the spectrum of of “NEW YEAR NEW ME” to “January 1st is an arbitrary date with no significance", I probably lean a bit towards the former. Additionally, these aren't really new habits for the most part, it's more so things I'd like to log. Since I have to pick an order, I've decided to sort them by frequency.
To keep track of all this, I'm using the Loop - Habit Tracker app. Looks great so far!
Dailies
The stuff I'll try to do every day. Maybe for 30 minutes or so? This is one of those “Don't Break The Chain” approaches.
Play Guitar
When I moved into my new place around September, I had to give up my drum set. I tried every possible mental plan I could to make it work, but it just wasn't going to happen. After closing that door, I realized that the previous tenant had left their guitar behind. I asked around, and it was definitely abandoned. Alright, let's try it! I've been playing for a few months now, and am really loving it. I've been learning with Yousician - free with limits, probably will start paying for it soon! Highly recommended.
Reading
I basically stopped reading for fun somewhere around junior or senior year of high school. Not sure what caused it or why, but that really sucks in retrospect - about 8 years lost. Sure, I read a couple books in college, but we're talking one per year here, and that's being generous. I forced myself to start reading again this summer, and it felt good. You can stalk me on Goodreads if you want to see what I like.
Dental Hygiene
Oof, we're getting intimate here aren't we? Personal, kinda gross story time: in 5th grade or so, I smashed a few of my front adult teeth in half on a playground. Dentist put em back together but I'm pretty sure I've been mentally traumatized by dentists since. On the other hand, literally everyone hates dentists, so this is probably just an excuse. Anyways, I have pretty poor dental hygiene, so I'll be actively working to improve it.
X per Week
Somewhere in between daily and weekly. No ties to days of the week, just keep momentum going!
Writing
Ah writing, the more difficult and more personal complement to reading. I've foolishly set goals of “X blog posts per <time period>” in the past, and that's just not how the real world works. Instead, I will try to write at least twice a week. Note that has zero correspondence to publishing, finishing, etc. I've read a lot about how people can do something insane like NaNoWriMo (hint: just write, worry later), so I'm going to take that approach.
Things I don't care about:
- Blog post vs song writing vs journaling
- Technical vs non-technical
- Private vs public
The goal is just to write. Putting it cautiously at twice a week (for 30 minutes? not sure), and we'll see how that goes. Ideally would move it up to three by the summer, but we'll play it by ear.
Exercise
Yeah, it's stereotypical, but it's also GoodForYou. I have some pretty complex opinions on this that are definitely obnoxious, but the tl;dr is
- Doing things for the sake of doing them is dumb (going to the gym)
- Being limited physically is very dumb 1
- #2 > #1, so we have to go the gym
Been going pretty regularly 3 times/week since April-ish. Let's keep it up.
Weeklies
The at least once a week, but don't let that stop you group.
Support Independent Creators
I (and most people) binge pretty hard on streaming services, like Netflix or Spotify (jk google play music 4 life), but it honestly feels pretty saturated nowadays. Most of my favorite content comes from a much more individual level - small bands from Bandcamp or more personal vids on Youtube. The goal is to make one {Patreon/Bandcamp/Gitter/similar service} donation per week. There's no real limits or guidelines here, but it's something I'm going to try and do. I'm also asking you for help, dear reader. If you know of other services like this [specifically, interested in one for writing/reading maybe? Medium doesn't seem like RightChoice for this] lemme know! Logging this somewhere is also important, TBD though. I'll append to home page maybe?
Explore More
I've always said I wanted to live in a big new city, and now that I do, I really don't take advantage of it. I'm not a hermit or anything, but I definitely have my small world loop and I tend to restrict myself to it. Once a week, I want to take my bike, a bus, or the subway and just go somewhere new. Maybe I'll plan it, maybe I won't. I don't really have wanderlust, but I do love absent-mindedly strolling. Just need to get myself to the location, and then we got this. This will probably be a weekends thing, and then once a week might be a bit high even? Goals are good though. Let's shoot for the moon and see where we land! 2