Tag Archives: habits

No more Daily Ink posts on my personal FB page

If you read my Daily Ink post via my Facebook Story, or on my wall, please follow my Pairadimes Facebook page. If you read my blog post somewhere else, just skip to the last paragraph.

As I approach a year of Daily-Ink blog posts, after leaving this blog dormant for a while, I’m reflecting on the process. One thing that I like about when I hit “Publish” on my blog is that it gets auto-posted to Twitter, LinkedIn, and my Pairadimes Facebook page. Then I manually go to the FB post on my page and add it to my FB story and my FB wall. I’m no longer going to do this. The challenge is that I often write my post either the night before it gets posted or I write it in the morning over an hour before I post it, (I like to have it done before my morning meditation and workout).

So, daily I have this task that I need to remember to do… and it becomes a chore rather than something I want to do. It also makes me feel like I’m ‘plugging my blog’, saying “Look at me!” And while I love comments and engagement on my blog, I do find I write better when I focus on the writing itself and not an audience of readers. Having my Daily-Ink blog automatically go to Twitter, LinkedIn, and my FB page is enough. Please follow my posts at one of these sites if you normally read my blog on my Facebook wall. Today is the last day I regularly share my posts on my FB wall or on my story.

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And as a special request to all readers, I do love your comments! Comments make the blogging experience better. However when I get a comment on Facebook or LinkedIn, or in a a tweet, they are fleeting. They end up on my timelines, never to be seen again. However, I go back to my blog posts often, and a comment there becomes part of a historical conversation that becomes part of the blog. So as a special request, please comment on my blog posts rather than in social spaces. ~ Thank you!

Use video to monitor slow progress

I broke my knee cap in late February. This is an injury with a minimum 6 week recovery. I’m well past 3 months, and while I was fortunate to have suffered very little with pain since about the second day after the injury, I still can’t run on it. Last Sunday I had a video physio appointment and I’m now on a daily regimen of strengthening exercises. I’m already seeing improvements in strength and balance but I know this will still take a while.

I’ve also been working on handstands for a while now. I had hoped that before the end of last month I would have been able to hold a 30 second, unsupported handstand. I’ve built up my strength and am now at the point where I can easily hold my weight for that amount of time (and more). However, the balance of an unsupported handstand is very challenging. I’m still a ways away from my goal. My physio gave me a tip, and I’ve got a new exercise to build up strength and balance using my forearms. I’m already seeing progress, but it is slow.

Slow progress is to be expected, but it can still feel frustrating at times. Day to day the improvements aren’t always noticeable. One thing I’ve noticed with my handstands is that video helps. Video allows me to see where I’ve come from, and how much I’ve improved. This is very helpful to inspire me to keep going, even when the progress continues to be slow.

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1243331006767210497?s=20

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1249596233078829056?s=20

Is it just me?

How different things are now than they were just 3 months ago!

You would think by now I would have figured out some good routines but I really haven’t. I feel caught up at work, then not two days later I feel swamped. I have a morning ritual I follow, then suddenly my whole routine feels up-side-down. I eat well and take care of myself, then I binge on junk and miss a workout.

I work best when I am a creature of habit, when I follow set routines and focus on the task at hand. But right now I can’t find a rhythm. I set things up and follow the plan for 2-3 days then I’m doing something completely different. My systems are temporary. My plans are not realized. I set a goal, then I do tons of things related to that goal, but somehow avoid the work that needs to be done to meet that goal.

It’s not like I’m falling apart. It isn’t that I’m overwhelmed and struggling. On the contrary, things are going well right now in many ways… it’s just that my routines are out of sync. My habits are an effort.  Is it just me, or are others feeling like they just can’t get into a good groove?

Fit, not fit for 52

I’m not behind where I should be or need to be. I don’t have someone I should be comparing myself to, other then me yesterday and me before that.

I don’t need to feel behind, feel I’m not where I should be, feel I’ll never be fit enough.

I’m fit, not just fit for 52.

I need to feel that I’m committed to getting better. I need to feel that incremental improvements are not just good enough, they are my goal. I need to feel good about where I am now, and where I’m going.

I don’t have a marathon to run, I’m not getting on a court, a playing field, and I’m definitely not entering a ring. I am taking care of a back that aches daily, and needs me to stay limber. I am working on my recovery from a knee injury. I am becoming stronger, fitter, and I’m working on my core to help me age gracefully. I am snacking less, eating more healthy, and taking vitamin supplements that my body needs.

It’s important to have goals. It’s important to care for my future self. But it’s important not to be too hard on my current self about all the ways I could and should be in a better place than I am now.

I don’t need my age, my current abilities and deficits, or somebody else’s progress compared to me to change how I feel about myself right now.

Putting unrealistic expectations on myself doesn’t make the journey enjoyable. I’m fit today. I plan to stay fit. But if I’m realistic I also need to recognize that the fittest me at 72 won’t be as fit as I am now at 52. So while taking care of myself and making small improvements is my current goal, maintainance and healthy living is the ultimate target.

Yes, age is just a construct, but aging is inevitable. The alternative really sucks. Think about it, we aren’t on a journey to any finish line, it’s the journey itself that matters.

Look up

It’s a long weekend, and I’m thankful for the extra day. As I summarized in a Twitter reply to someone yesterday, “On the ‘blah’ scale of 1-10, I’ve been a solid 9 all weekend.“. I ended the day yesterday passed out on the couch with my workout clothes on, and no workout started.

I feel cooped up, motivation is low, and I have had no desire to work, watch TV, listen to my book, exercise, or do a host of things that I’ve put on my home ‘to do’ list.

But today is a new day. The sun is shining. I slept well, I’ve watered the new grass, I’m writing, I’m looking forward to my meditation. I know that my workout will be hard enough to remove the guilt of not working out yesterday. I’ll go for a walk, I’ll knock a couple items off of my to do list, and I have a conversation on Zoom tonight with my grads and their parents that I’m looking forward to.

Sometimes we just need to look up… in more ways than one.

Goals aren’t enough

I very rarely read or listen to a book, or watch a movie more than once. Atomic Habits is a book that I listened to twice. I also subscribe to James Clear‘s 3-2-1 weekly email, one of only 3 weekly email lists that I subscribe to. I listen to James last night on the Sam Harris podcast and stopped long enough to tweet this quote:

“A habit is not a finish line to be crossed, it’s a lifestyle to be lived.” ~ James Clear

My daily writing and meditation, my workout routine, my getting back into podcasting (trying to produce/create creative work)… these are habits I have developed or am developing. They don’t have an end goal. They don’t have a place where I can land and say, ‘Yes! I have arrived!“:

“A habit is not a finish line to be crossed, it’s a lifestyle to be lived.”

This is a time when more than ever we have an opportunity to do things for ourselves. I haven’t found my work schedule to be any less hectic at the moment. I still bring things home and fill my mind with the things I need to accomplish that don’t get done in a day. But I have more time at home to do things I felt I didn’t have time for previously.

It’s a great time to make positive lifestyle changes. It’s also a good time to reflect on what we will keep doing, or change, when things return to (some semblance of) normal.

It’s a Saturday, and after writing this, I’ll meditate. I meditate after writing because when I meditate first, I get stuck thinking about my writing and my mind is too distracted to meditate. So, I reward myself after publicly sharing my writing with 10 minutes of ‘me time’… a simple way to connect two habits and make them easier to do. I’ll work out, and at some point today and I’ll play with making my last podcast with Dave Sands into a video podcast. This is something new that I want to play with. The first video will take a while, since I need to create a reusable intro. But, since I need to interview people from a distance, and Zoom creates a video recording, it seems like a natural progression from sound recordings only… and it’s creative… and it’s fun… and it makes me use my brain in a creative way, unlike Netflix or Crave.

People set goals all the time, but as James Clear says, goals aren’t enough. Every competitive athlete at the Olympics has a goal of winning gold, only one of them will achieve this. But the habits we build into our lives, those become the lifestyle we live, they don’t lead to a finish line target, they lead to a life well lived.

Finding my sea legs

I remember a trip to the Cayman Islands with my dad. We were on the small island of Cayman Brac and we hired a boat to take us to see a shoreline that my dad wanted to explore. The boat wasn’t very big, under 25 feet long, and not designed for anything more than a day trip. The captain was a short, old man with a weathered, leathery face that made him look over 100 years old. He was letting me troll for marlin while we travelled. The waves were choppy, the boat bounced and swayed, and I had to keep my eyes on the horizon to keep from getting sea sick.

At one point I caught a barracuda and after I reeled it up to the boat, I couldn’t get it over the edge of the boat without standing up from my chair. The movement of the boat set me on my ass before I could take two steps towards the stern. The old sea captain put my dad’s hand on the steering wheel and pointed forward. He then walked to me, as sure-footed as if he were a young athlete on a flat track, picked me off the deck and helped me back into the seat. He then took my rod, walked back to the stern and got the fish into the boat. All the while, the boat bounced in the rough seas and this captain casually made tiny little shuffle-step movements with his feet, keeping himself perfectly balanced. This ancient-looking man had sea legs, he was as comfortable with the motion of the sea under his feet as we are on land.

This is my twenty second year as an educator and for the first time in years I feel like I’ve lost my ‘sea legs’. I’m struggling to find my balance. I’ve struggled with work load, and time management, and work-life balance before – I think all committed educators do – but this is different.

I recently discussed with Dave Sands that, “All screen time is not created equal,” but this is where I’m losing my balance. Beyond a daily walk, I’m spending every moment of my time in my school office or at home. During this time, I’m spending a fair bit more time online. When I’m at work, there is a constant flow of video conferences that interrupt any sense of work flow for my other tasks, and so days are very busy, but don’t always feel productive.

My online time at home flows from distraction, to entertainment, to work, to creating and writing, to news, back to work, and then back to news or distraction, with a daily workout thrown in. Recently, I’ve missed workouts, I’ve missed my daily meditation (3 times this month), I’ve spent more time writing (without writing much more than I usually do), and my focus seems scattered.

I need to rework my daily routine during this pandemic. It feels difficult because there is a constant flow of information that keeps shifting what things look like at work. There is also ever-changing news about how our social distancing expectations will change going forward. Metaphorically, the waves keep churning, and I’m struggling to keep my balance on the boat. I don’t have my sea legs. I’m going to rethink and reintroduce some of my routines that have worked for me before, and see if I can steady myself a bit.

I declare a news free day

I need a break. The fact is that I’ve never been a fan of the negativeness of the news. Before the pandemic I rarely watched news on television, now my wife watches the evening news and I join her. I hardly ever searched for daily news articles on my phone, now I check my Flipboard news 2-3 time a day, and I follow the stats of the Coronavirus.

Before this pandemic hit, I used to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world by checking out the trending hashtags on Twitter. Most of these are fun, but if a big world event happened then I could search that hashtag for a link from a reliable source and get caught up.

Today I’m doing none of that. Today I will enjoy a day knowing that the world will get along fine without my attention. Today I will permit myself to be blissfully ignorant to what’s happening beyond my work day and family time.

The news can wait… I’m taking a break.

Ps. Here’s Some Good News that I watched a few days ago… this I could get used to watching regularly, after my break today.

Nothing normal about the new normal

I’ve been camping out at my oldest daughter’s place in Victoria while my wife and other daughter are home. I’ve loved the daily walks we have gone on, and we’ve been watching Prime Video together in the evenings, enjoying ‘Hunters’ – a fictional series about a group of Nazi hunters in the late 70’s. These two activities add up to about 3 hours of my day… The rest of it has been a blur. Recovering from a broken knee and a shoulder injury has left me feeling very limited about what I can do for exercise besides go for long walks, with a cane, which just makes me feel old.

I’ve taken some more time to write than I normally do. I’ve spent way too much time following the news and stats of the Coronavirus, and I’ve more than doubled my social media time on my phone. I’ve also been thinking a lot about work and have had a number of emails and calls related to “continuity of educational opportunities” that will continue, even with our schools closed to students. Like most people, I have more questions than answers.

What this all adds up to is a very unusual schedule, where I have no idea what normal feels like? Today I slept in. I usually write this before 6am, and right now it’s after 1pm. The only thing on my agenda after this is a walk on my own, listening to my audio book, and a walk with my daughter around sunset. I don’t have the motivation to do more, and yet I’m already getting restless and know that I have to give myself some projects to work on. I’ve got a neglected newsletter and podcast that I might bring back. I might do some writing beyond this daily-ink. I might nap.

No matter how I look at things right now, there is nothing normal about what my day will look like until March break ends. Even then I don’t think I will have any kind of normalcy to my life… but the ‘normal’ of the past few days has to change soon because I’ve never really done ‘nothing much’ well as a major pastime. The new normal after the March break is still filled with unknowns and will include a drastically different schedule than before this global pandemic changed all of our lives.

What have you been doing to spend time well during this social distancing experience?

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Be the designer of your world and not merely a consumer of it

I love this quote by James Clear in his book Atomic Habits. While I’m not big on platitudes, I think this invites more thought and conversation:

“Be the designer of your world and not merely a consumer of it.” ~ James Clear

How many times in a day are we faced with a decision where we passively acquiesce and do what is expected or what is easy rather than taking control and making a choice? The potato chips are easy to grab; The second last attempt on the last set of a workout suddenly becomes the last attempt; The rude person at work says something inappropriate, but you let it slide; The student who knows the answer but doesn’t raise their hand; The 5 minute check of social media becomes 25 minutes of scrolling; the ‘Next Episode’ counts down on Netflix and you let it start.

How many moments are there in a day that can be chosen rather than consumed ‘as usual’? We are the designers of our lives… or at least we should be.