Another New Habit

Past Habits

It seems as though this summer I'm starting a bunch of new habits, exercising regularly, waking up at 6 am regularly, writing regularly, and now blogging weekly. Hopefully, I will be as diligent with writing and blogging as with exercising. For the past three weeks, I've been doing 30 minutes of yoga six days a week. Yoga is the only type ofexercise that I look forward to. I hate running, I dread doing pushups, I avoid sit-ups, I tolerated numerous sports while in school. Until I tried yoga over the holiday season this past December, exercising was a chore. Not that yoga is easy. This latest 90 day challenge I've started is grueling and I was sore after days one and two, and I’ve yet to wake up tomorrow to see if I’m sore from day 3. However, I enjoy seeing the markable improvements in my flexibility, although I didn’t have that much before yoga either. Notice that although I realized I enjoy yoga back in December, I’ve only diligently practiced yoga for 3 weeks.

Obstacles

As with most people, I find it difficult to make time for activities that aren’t required. Since I’m a college student who volunteers and has a part-time job, classes, homework, studying and arriving to work and the place I volunteer at on time is mandatory, whereas exercising is not. So over winter break I found yoga, loved it, and practiced regularly until classes started again then I practiced twice the entire semester. During spring break, I picked it up briefly, but neglected it again as soon as classes restarted. This summer I’m taking, admittedly fewer classes, but I hope that if I make time during the summer that I will be more likely to continue when August appears. Waking up at 6 am has happened once, 6:30 thrice, later than that the rest of the times. Contrastively writing everyday has a 100% success rate, but only because I just started today. I need to change my mindset. I need to switch the categorization of these things from optional to mandatory, because they are what I want. If I wake up at 6am regularly, then I will be more likely to keep that during the fall, which will help me keep exercising, likewise with writing.

Details of the New Habit

Blogging I plan on doing once per week, hopefully on Mondays or Fridays (in which case I’m either late or early) so hopefully that schedule will be sustainable. The next question is length. How long should these posts be? I stare at my screen for a few seconds, before switching over to google. “how many words is the average blog post,” I type as I sit outback of my parents’ house on the deck with the pet bird Mabel. She’s in her cage so she doesn’t fly away, but as she’s a tropical bird she much prefers to be outside on these nice summer days than cooped up in the house. Then again I don’t read minds, much less those of Green-Cheeked Conures. As you can probably tell, the recommended length is longer than what I had before this paragraph.

More Difficulty

Back when I had the first half of the first paragraph written a problem with the webpage occurred and for a terrifying 30 seconds I thought I had lost everything I wrote. Despite the fact that my dad has told me numerous times to save everything often, I don’t. Sometimes I do obsessively, but I didn’t. The fear only lasted for 30 seconds, because I figured out that the website automatically saves drafts, after I had to reload the page after attempting to recreate what I had down. Therefore, the website had saved all but a sentence or two of what I had written. Nevertheless, I have learned my lesson, for now, and am writing this in a document on my computer that saves automatically. Unfortunately, though, I will probably forget this lesson, as I have many times before and down the line somewhere I will unconsciously stop saving my work constantly. It’s just like starting a new habit. Most of the time they fade away after a bit, but while I might, read most definitely will, forget about saving my work. 

A Silver Lining

Nevertheless, I’m determined to keep these habits as much as possible. You must hold me accountable, because even if you’re not actually there for a bit, I don’t know that. A lot of people, including me, claim that they would do basically anything if they could achieve their dreams. This is me attempting to follow through with that.