On 2022, habits, and victories

There is a part of me that wants to do a little retrospective for the end of the year. I have been envious of others' retrospectives in the past. A voice in me tells me that nothing important happened this year. I want to ask it who decided that. It was not me, that much I know for certain. It is someone else who speaks with my voice. A monster. A monster comprised of the worst parts of my parents, teachers, and family elders. I used to be blind to this. My mind knows the truth now, but there are parts of my body that have yet to follow. So I continue to tell myself that my experiences are worthless, and of no import to anyone - much less to myself. But as Anne (my previously mentioned therapist) has told me repeatedly, the less you focus on these old monsters, the less power they have on you. You shouldn't be afraid of them, but you shouldn't dwell on them either - kind of like Voldemort. Well she said something about neural pathways and strengthening new healthy ones and making the older ones weaker- but this way is more fun.

  I'm just going to see if I can list 10, and then expand on them as needed. 
  1. Quit Social Media
  2. Family Boundaries
  3. Reading Books 
  4. Time Blocking 
  5. Writing 
  6. Spending time on self care. 
  7. Started drawing again
  8. Language learning refocused
  9. On and off Meditating 
  10. Fasting (and general increased focus on fitness)

Number one was among the most difficult. I don't think I could have successfully done any of the others without doing that first. For the purposes of that bullet point, they are mostly the algorithm led ones (i.e Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook). Most of these I could do without or replaced with a better source that feeds into my RSS feed reader. One of the biggest thing I learned was to not have FOMO. It is so gratifying to fall to. Get that small blip of dopamine. I realized I don't value any of the "news" or facts that I felt so desperate to get. Not only do I not value them, I do not even remember them. Now, I've realized that there is little value in getting the news as it is reported. Things are still being discovered and worked through. The best coverage doesn't arrive until a few days - or even weeks- after the incident. I've taken to reading these instead. These are the replacement RSS feeds that have found their home in my routine. The other benefit from number one is that I found a lot more time. We often ignore it, but all these quick checks on social media really siphon our time. When I started this year, I recorded myself going to my phone 70+ times a day. I knew that was untenable. But I had not considered the time loss that comes from the rapid context switching. Cal Newport talks about this in his book Deep Work and it had a profound impact on me. Until I read that book, I felt like I was missing out and depriving myself from social media. However, upon reading it- I realized what a boon this actually was.

Number Two was a hard one. And it is one that I am still working on. However, this year was the first year that I really established hard boundaries. I had stepped away for a while, but this year was truly the first year I reengaged and tested those limits. There were a lot of successes in this- but also some failures. It is the only way I will learn. Possible that the steps I took this year is the culmination of many hours of therapy and reading. But I took them this year. And I am allowing myself a victory here.

Number three is one that was only possible because of number one! If I didn't quit all those time wasting social media platforms, I would never have made time to read. And I like reading! I recently finished The Oldest Cure in the World by Steve Hendricks and How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk by Adele Farber. Both were really interesting books that I will write about later. I also started reading a book by Gabrielle Oettigen "Rethinking Positive Thinking". There was an NPR Hidden Brain episode about this in 2016 and it had "Wow'd" me! I had put it in my "read list" in 2016. This change in my life has made it so I can actually put a dent in that list. If I were to look back and count, I don't think I have ever enjoyed and read as many books as I did in 2022. True blessing.

Time blocking (number four) came as a natural result from reading the Book Indistractable by Nir Eyal and Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. I really cannot understate the effect these two books had on me. The latter made me rethink my commitments and why I was making them. A fact, that I would only later recognize to be essential in building boundaries. If you boil it down, both of these books are books on healthy boundaries. One is healthy boundaries to your time. Eyal's book is monumental in it's real life examples and explanations on why we get distracted and how we can stop it. This was a keystone understanding for someone who found himself constantly distracted by the sweet allure of algo-dopamine (algorithm derived dopamine? can this be a word now). I expected tech to be the solution to this time blocking issue. Tech created this problem, so why shouldn't it be the solution? I kept stumbling over it though. Our phones and laptops, the "new" internet as a whole is crafted very deliberately to keep you on it. My brain, compromised, against a hoard of the smartest engineers at FAANG (and other big tech companies)- I was doomed from the start. So, feeling dejected, I turned to analog for my time blocking needs. It felt a little silly. It was not "efficient". I mean, who even uses a planner now? But this slowing down and intentional counter-efficiency proved useful. I became more mindful of the things that I agreed to do. It gave me a second or two to consider the commitments I was making.

Number five, writing, has been a habit I started late last year. I had tried to get myself to do morning pages in the fashion described by Julia Cameron in her seminal book the artist's way. The idea is to write, first thing in the morning, three pages worth. I had done this verbatim for the first few months. In time, it turned into something slightly different - I made it my own. I still write first thing in the morning. But with no intention of finishing it then. I have found that morning me has ideas that need to be written down. Those ideas, however, are not yet fully mature or marinated. So I've begun to come back to those morning writings and define them later. This small mind-shift has done a lot to remove the pressure of writing.

Number six, making time for myself and self-care, I still struggle with. I always feel rushed to do things. It made sense, of course. There was never time to do much of anything but survive. From my diagnosis at 14 till my transplantation a decade later, I could only survive. Hopping from one hospital to another- one surgery to another, it was a perpetual cycle of recovery and bedrest. "Losing" these years to chronic illness has left me feeling like I am behind. Always. Always feeling like I am not doing enough. This overwhelming fear of not doing enough, not accomplishing enough, and just simply put - not being enough. Burkeman's book helped me deal with this fear. I still have wandering thoughts of other things I ought to be doing instead of relaxing. Yet, it is getting easier. Especially when I block in time especially for this.

The following number seven is pretty much related to self-care. However, time blocking had a pretty significant impact as well. Blocking time for drawing and only drawing made me realize that I had stagnated. Drawing was something I did. But I did not grow or enjoy it in the same way I had before. It is different now. When I put my earplugs on and block out the external world, I relive the euphoria of drawing I knew as a child. It is so different. Drawing without any distractions. Blocking in specific time for drawing, also means I stop drawing while it is still fun. This is a recurring realization for me. I tend to otherwise do an activity until I'm burned out. Because I don't want to deprive myself the joy of working on it at the moment. Yet, coming back to burned out activities or coming back from burn out is awful. It is significantly more productive and healthy to stop at a good point. I would, in the past, continue the activity because I hadn't felt like I accomplished enough. This not only made it hard to stop, but it also made it hard to begin. Because I do not always feel accomplished. But time-blocking changes the goal of the activity. It is no longer about the output, but the input. I can't guarantee that every session will result in a work of art. But I can guarantee that there will be time blocked for drawing. What a simple but powerful mind-shift. It's become my mantra for most things now. I can control the input, not the output.

I've been refocusing on my language learning too. This was something I had been "somewhat" doing. But this year I have continued all SRS, Spoken, and Duolingo. Duolingo actually has been a weird motivator. I have a 186 days streak right now - the highest I have had. Each day, I do both my Duolingo and SRS work together. And while walking the dogs, I listen to Pimsleur or something like that. Sure, I sound like a crazy guy talking to himself in rudimentary Chinese while walking the dogs, but it's practice. I have not been this motivated to do this in a while. It seems to be working too. My wife told me the other day that my accent while speaking is almost gone! What a validation.

I think 9 and 10 and pretty...similar. Both are things that I have told myself I like doing. But I did not do. They are the things that fell into my hobby-lite. I don't know if that is a real concept or something I came up with. But it is when you buy things because you feel like you want to be the kind of person who does it. You buy books because you think of yourself as someone who reads. You buy art supplies or stationaries because you feel yourself as a creative individual or someone who is organized. Or maybe you have a gym membership, because you eventually want to be fit. Well, sad to say, I was all three of those. Throughout the course of this past year, I have done away with most of that. It has not been easy. But I imagine it will be worth it. I am not minimalist. Though it may seem like that from an outsider's point of view. I am just now being aggressively realistic about the things I use and need. And truth be told, when it comes to fitness and meditation, you need very little to get started. I did not need a fancy meditation app (looking at you headspace) or that amazing fitness course that promises to -completely- change you. I just needed to do things. Sit down to meditate. Walk around or run with the dogs. Play. Tech couldn't solve this problem either. I download, watched, and acquired so many apps, courses, and programs. There is a fallacy that I fall into often. That the reason why I don't do things is a lack of information or the right tools. But as I've seen this year with many things, that isn't the case. If you're not interested in doing something, buying a more expensive tool for it won't change your motivations. Well, it certainly did not for me.

So many of these victories built upon each other. It feels like cheating. They may be, the may not be- but all that matters is that I did them.

End 2022 retrospective.