Caught Up With Me

Good habits to create, then nurture.  For me, getting up when I tell myself I should irrespective of how I feel, then going on the treadmill for the pre-determined session before my first activity.  I've done well since New Year's.  Up at 7AM with few exceptions such as illness following my Covid vaccine, which traded one healthy effort for another.  Then treadmill.  Lapse for an illness like cytokine surge from the covid vaccine or an injury to a part of my lower extremity.  But lapses are few.  To do this successfully, I set a fixed time:  8:15AM, enough time for two 8 oz cups of coffee made in a Keurig K-Express and to review my plan of attack that keeps the rest of the day productive plus at least one crossword puzzle.  And maybe a blog entry, and certainly check overnight messages.

Resumption of OLLI classes interfered with what had been going so well.  To get to my 9AM classes, treadmill sessions were shifted to 7:35AM.  One cup of coffee, retrieve newspaper for my wife, attention to my indoor plants on scheduled days, then about a half hour to get dressed, prepare lunch on Thursdays, review my day if outlined the night before, make an insulated mug of coffee before heading to the driveway at 8:25AM, which would give me enough time to sip from the mug and greet an old friend or two in the auditorium, then settling down for my morning class.

It has a beneficial purpose, but a few weeks into the adapted schedule, I feel its effects.  Legs sore, slightly tired, not always able to squeeze a breakfast together before leaving the house, something I had been doing as an initiative with reasonable success while still on OLLI intercession.  I do not feel particularly tired before my computer or desk clock reaches treadmill time.  And I don't struggle with the session.  But I also have not noticed the traditional benefits of regular exercise at appropriate capacity.  My ability to increase the treadmill rate and duration has not happened.  My muscles sometimes ache.  Knees feel like they have been stressed.  Stretching, which I schedule twice a week, has found my capacity deteriorating.

I sleep better.  I've been perhaps a tad more energetic in the late morning, though hurting by midday.  And being among people, even interacting with a mixture of strangers and friends, has improved my lingering feeling of loneliness.  So I'm not feeling badly with the new schedule, just with some musculoskeletal sequelae of my effort.  

Vacation, with its respite from the schedule, is not for another four weeks, though close enough to anticipate a need for some new scenery and new people.  And at the end of each month I afford myself three consecutive days off the treadmill for my legs to recover.  It has been gratifying to display what some might call grit, doing what I set out to do despite its discomfort.  Though the health benefits and social benefits come at the neglect of some of my mental activity, as my commitment to the things I create has fallen behind.  Now that sleep and exercise are reasonably committed and executed, I can make a similar commitment to perhaps some fixed writing and expression times.

Creating New Habits

One of the interesting books that I had to wait in a library queue to read has been James Clear's Atomic Habits which explored habit development, its advantages and its impediments.  As I start to select the next dozen projects for the coming half-year, I looked at my daily and weekly task lists to get a better idea of what activities have become entirely ingrained, what get done but not really habitual, and which have defied my efforts or met with resistance.  On Mondays I weigh myself and measure waist circumference, largely without fail, though I do need to schedule these.  Same with checking the oil level of my car on set days twice monthly.  My wake time is set by a wrist vibrator, bedtime by the clock.  My day always begins with dental care, for all practical purposes now habitual.  Treadmill sessions are pretty reliable but need a conscious prod from my conscience.  I take my medicine at suppertime.  Each morning I make coffee, arguably my most truly habitual activity.  Food is off limits from 8PM to 6AM, something done so long and so successfully that it probably makes the grade as a habit.  I check my indoor plants and the containers outside my front door every morning with little prodding.  Dishes in the sink from the night before get washed early each morning.  I retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway and deposit it at the front door for my wife's reading pleasure.  All largely now ingrained activities.  It's hard to say how long it took to create these largely habitual activities, probably longer than the three weeks often cited for habit creation.

Some of my initiatives would have gone better if habitual.  Writing times never got fixed.  Even my contractually obligated monthly submission requires scheduling and fortitude.  OLLI classes remain a defined task more than a habit.  I have been writing three laudable activities at the end of each day so appreciation seems to be on its way to becoming habitual, or at least an evening task that I rank higher than other options.  Thursday review of weekly Parsha commentary happens each week, but more as a scheduled task than an automated activity.  It gets done for all practical purposes 100% of the time.  And alas, no truly recreational activities have become inviolable.

As I embark on my annual June effort to assemble twelve laudable goals for the remainder of the calendar year, I need to recognize that none really go without effort, though most can still take advantage of the many things I now seem to perform without much thought.