In this post:
I ramble generally about the idea of restarting a suspended habit.
October 1st marked the beginning of a new fiscal year. For whatever reason (that I may or may not google immediately after I finish typing this up…), the federal government has decided that October is the beginning of the year instead of January.
Much like how the government decides to consider this recurring date as a new start, I occasionally restart habits. Occasionally, I conjure up an entirely new habit for a while.
Like many working-age members of society, a significant amount of my time is accounted for being at work, preparing to go to work, or decompressing from work. Also like many people, I have various interests that I’d like to apply my non-work-focused time toward.
Between working and sleeping, I try to write, exercise, play video games, interact with friends, and watch shows. I have no concept of the balance among these different activities. I often feel frustrated if I do not do each of these things at least once a week.
Throughout October, I wanted to try a daily creative exercise.
I’d heard about Inktober before – heck, I even tried doing a ‘Sketchtober’ challenge in either 2019 or 2020. However, visual art isn’t really one of my big creative interests.
This year, the itch to create something daily reared its head again. So, I tried my hand at digital audio workstation-based “ditty” creation. I found the effort to not take very long most nights. Often, it did not take more than 45 minutes and I don’t think it ever took more than 2 hours.
Seems to me that a habit is easier to keep if you do it every single day.
With November being National Novel Writing Month, I figure I’ll try resuming my nightly writing projects. Successfully creating a ditty a day in October felt inspiring. I figure I can build back up to writing 1500-3000 words a night.
I imagine that writing these monthly blog posts is difficult due to the significant downtime between posts. The lack of consistent activity makes writing them less of “a fun, regular recreational and creative habit” and more of “an ever-looming deadline that does not attract my attention despite demanding my executive effort.”
Exercising also often falls off of my priority list.
It’s always easier to do “fifty push-ups twice a day, every day at work, at 0900 and 1100” than “work out after work every other day” for me…
What do you do to kick off and then keep a habit, old or new?
72 Airman's Writings 