Habits & Nicholas Cage

This year has been a year of interruptions and distractions. Some have been positive like going away on holiday for the first time in 2 years to LA and Las Vegas to run the Las Vegas Half Marathon and some have been less positive (or maybe more positive) such as catching covid on the 27th March 4 days after Alan had a headache and took a test.

I'm now reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, well I'm actually listening to it via Audible and it's reminded me of a very useful tip that I gained on an Arvon Master Class by David Quantick in 2020, bascially along the lines of writing being like exercise, if you do some of it every day, it becomes easier to do more of it and get better at it. 

Covid interrupted all of my healthy habits - exercise, daylight, social interaction, volunteering and more and it created some negative ones - downloading more computer games, lack of ability to sleep at a sensible time with not as many physical cues. It also massively increased my screentime and probably alcohol consumption as well. The brain fog and forgetfulness on top of headaches have also made reading hard.

One month on and I'm starting to feel a bit better, but shifting back to healthy habits has been more of a challenge. Atomic Habits has had some helpful suggestions such as "Habit Stacking" where I'll try and tag on healthy additional habits to things I'm already doing i.e. if I go for a run, I'll come back and do 10 minutes of resistance and stretching rather than having to do it at a separate time late in the evening. Also facing a Tough Mudder in August I desperately need to get back into the gym, so I've suggested to Alan that after parkrun each Saturday we can head to the gym for a quick workout as we'll already be in workout gear and won't have to get showered an additional time.

This weekend has been a fairly productive and slightly more normal one. On Friday we went to Sainsburys and stocked up on groceries and then on Saturday I did an Arvon class with Jessica Andrews which has given me some great ideas to get my novel back on track including that if I'm feeling a bit bored, it's not necessarily because the novel itself is boring (although there's a risk if you write bored, you'll bore your reader) but that it can be self-doubt or just impatience and that potentially (although she doesn't necessarily use this method herself) starting a new project makes it less important to make the existing project "perfect". Consequently, I'm going to try and blog more, journal more, free write more which will hopefully make me more creative and inspired to finish the novel. It also feeds into one of the Atomic Habits chapters where it mentions a study where photography students were put into groups to either be graded on quantity (100 photos needed to be submitted) or quality (1 perfect photo to be submitted) the first group ended up producing better work as they just experimented more and were more practised photographers.

Yesterday I moved the furniture around in my office so that the sofabed is now against the wall facing the bookcase and the window. The entrance is now slightly obstructed, but I can sit on the sofa and read looking at my books (accessing all the shelves) and also looking out of the window. Alan is less impressed with my efforts, but I'm pleased with how it feels now in this room. We also went on our first longer run and did 7 miles to Fairburn and back with a bit of walking, but we got there ok.

This morning I mostly set up a spreadsheet for guides, learning some new excel tips from both YouTube and Alan's help. I then went for a run and dropped off a book as a present for my friend Gem's little girl's belated birthday and then stretched as soon as I'd got back from the run. 

We then went shopping for some chefs knives and lightweight camping chairs at the Junction 32 outlet, had Pizza Express for tea and watched The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. I loved it as I do love Con Air and this was a very clever, very funny very action packed film with lots of self referential stuff that made me smile. It was just what I needed in terms of escapism and I massively recommend it.