Category: notebook

As you might have noticed looking at the dates of these posts I failed to keep up with writing them daily. It is something I am struggling with in many other areas as well. One might even say I’m in the habit of quickly breaking new habits.

I will go over this incident but mostly as an example of a general pattern I have found with me.

The Good Reason

It always starts with a good reason to break the habit for one day.

This time I had an extensive work related writing task due on Wednesday night and a second one for a hobby project. So while I did not publish something here that day, I actually did a lot of writing, which made it okay for me not to post here.

Similar, sometimes even better, good reasons come up in other areas as well. That might be a sick day where it is impossible to do a workout or a celebration that gives an day off from a diet.

In itself I do not think that it is a big issue to skip a habit for a day. Some reasons are just more important than a habit and it does not sound healthy to force yourself through everything. As long as one goes right back to the habit when the special situation is over and exceptions do not happen too often.

The Bad Reason

After the valid, good reason for me usually follows something that might look like a good reason to continue breaking the habit, but actually is not.

In this instance it was a post I wanted to spend more time on. I read a interesting question on social media and while composing an answer I noticed it would be too long for a response there. So I started writing a blogpost.

After the first paragraph I found a pitfall in my thoughts and it became clear I had to think a bit longer about the topic.

But instead of just writing something short, maybe even bad one a different topic (I actually have made a list of short topics I could cover), I postponed the post.

Again, this is a pattern with me not following through with new habits. Things like “I can’t go running because my only short running pants are in the laundry.” or “I made a tough workout today, I don’t have to pay attention to the fasting day.”

The Procrastination

After the second day I have a, at least subconscious, notion that I did not succeed and the latest reason was not really good. This leads to anxiety to even getting back to it and / or the will to overcompensate.

This time it was a mix. I wanted to finish that blogpost and write a second. But what I actually did was nothing. I visited a ingame event, did more chores than usual and watched some technical talks. Those all are things I’m fine with having done, but they should not have kept me from taking 10 minutes to write at least something.

That went on for a few days.

In sports it often leads to me questioning the current workout plan or even sport I’m doing instead of just getting back to it.

A solutions?

In an ideal world, I would be self aware enough to notice steps 2 and 3. But since that is not always the case, I will have to set up some backup options. For sports, having my wife create time for me in our busy life to do it worked pretty well. Telling her why I would not use that time that day, is a pretty good moment to become aware of it being a bad excuse.

For other areas? I will have to find something. But at least now I have seen the pattern in my behavior and can try to change it. Break the habit of breaking new habits.

I just want to go back to normal.

A sentence like that or similar is something I hear rather frequently lately. It even crossed my own mind a few times and it is a rather tempting thought.

Getting back to a world without contact restrictions, no more masks, parties, travel a (somewhat) well running economy, schools and kindergarten …

There is a lot that we rightfully miss right now and it is okay to want that back, to miss it. Liberties and quality of life are things we have to regain once the crisis is over.

But just wishing things would be as they were half a year ago do not help us now. It is not inspiring action. What we need right now is improvements to the current situation and an outlook of how we want the future to be.

Do we really want to go back to how thing were?

Crowded places, lack of personal space, racism and climate change being ignored again, politicians ignoring science?

Normal half a year ago was not all good. Going back, will not fix anything. Right now is the time to move forward, not to stare backwards in a romanticized way.

This is not only true for the great scheme of things but on a personal level as well.

Maybe you want to push your employer to allow for more home office opportunities (if it works well for you), maybe now is the time to quit hobbies you did not really enjoy and only not notice how much of a relief it is that they aren’t possible.

Or the opposite, you only realisiere now how much you are missing a particular thing and want to invest more into it.

There is a lot for us to think about and act on these days. Let’s not get hold back by the old normal.

If you got to this post via a link on my Twitter, you got here via a cross posted tweet. Most of my tweets actually are just copies of my toots on chaos.social a Mastodon instance I’m active on.

Crossposting is the act of posting the same message to multiple information channels; forums, mailing lists, or newsgroups.

Wikipedia

This is often frowned upon and I generally agree with that sentiment.

What’s the problem?

1 In general, one should cater their content to the audience. That holds true for social media and for every other place. There might only minor differences in the audiences that get the content, but especially the edge cases can cause problems. I’m not even going to start about cross posting to quite different audiences.

2 Conversations are not kept properly. You can for example not answer to a retweet when it gets posted to Mastodon and keep the original author in the conversation since they are on a different platform. Even if they have accounts on both platforms, the automated tools have no ways to track them.

3 Different platforms have different features and norms. For example Mastodon has content warnings. They are an incredible useful tool and are widely used as trigger warnings, to mark NSFW content or hide spoilers and other things. Ported to twitter, they make only little sense and posts from twitter will always lack them, sometimes violating the rules of the instance.

4 All platforms still need maintenance and monitoring. Usually the main platform of a person gets most of their attention and that is fine as long as they keep looking at the reactions on the others as well. Sadly too often that does not happen and makes responses there kinda pointless.

So why am I doing it?

Because I’m lazy.

Honestly, that’s it. It takes more time to write a post multiple times and even with copy paste, mentions have to be adjusted etc. So far I haven’t found a good way to easily share finds on different platforms while giving credit to the original author. It can be done, no question, it just takes more effort.

And now?

To mitigate the negative effects, I only cross post original post in one direction (Mastodon -> Twitter) and try to double check before a retweets or boosts that it really suits both audiences. Of course, no ongoing conversations get cross posted either and both clients have the same notification settings.

But this is not the standard I really want to hold myself to. One of the goals for this year will be to change my social media habits to fully get rid of the automation without making it too painful to post on multiple platforms.

For some reason doing chores helps me to calm down in exceptional stressful times. That might be because it are tasks that don’t require thinking and allow for the brain to “turn off” and move the processing of the stressful things into a background task. But it very much also could be the quick Dopamin kick of getting something done.

Sure, having a way to deal with stressful times in life and getting stuff done can be very valuable. But where is the line where it becomes just procrastination? How do I notice if what I am doing is actually helpful or if I am just putting another, anxiety inducing task aside by doing the chores?

I struggle with this quite a bit. While things not done in the household create a sense of failure and guilt (“What a bad dad are you that you can’t even handle a kid, job and the chores?”) but sometimes other things are just more important (like taxes).

To accommodate for that I’m trying to alternate between other (dreadful) tasks and my typical chores. Like bring out the trash and clean the can, then write the invoices before emptying the dishwasher.

Another way for me to find out where my mind stands is asking myself if I would prefer to play games instead of the chore. If the chores win, they are a factor in what is creating my stress, and should be done. If the games win, well, everything seems normal and i should do either work or the chores. But if I’m feeling indifferent, then I’m pretty sure it is procrastination and my mind just wants to get away from another task.

So tired today, not even running could uplift my spirits. This basically is me hoping things will get better soon.

At least the list of writing topics is growing, just the focus is lacking to put them into posts.

Something painful, bad, not entirely unexpected but still sudden happened today. All my thoughts circle around it but I can’t public talk about it. I will most likely write about it in the coming days, but I also did not want to break the daily writing habit right on the second day.

The embrace of a two year old, her few words, can make the pain worse and sooth it at the same time.

The notebook is inspired by Rixx daily writing practice (https://ramble.rixx.de/) and David MacIver‘s Daily Writing Guide.

The notebook here will by may attempt to establish a similar daily writing practice. These will be rather raw and barely edited posts about all kind of topics. Some will most likely be NSFW but tagged as such.

Because of this, they will not be shown in the feed or front page of the (much neglected) main blog. If you want to subscribe in an RSS reader the notebook category has it’s own feed though.

Why is it on this blog and not it’s own place? Mostly because this was the fastest way of getting everything set up. I love tech and can get lost in setting a site up, choosing theme, editing it, optimizing it ….. I would get it done eventually and it would be better than a hidden category but the point is starting the practice and this should get it done.