id: 2021-03 title: Personal Update March 2021 date: 2021-03-27 ---

## Personal Update March 2021

So in the spirit of honestly chronicling my journey, I have to say that this past week has been fairly unsuccessful. Due to significant stresses in my life a lot of my routines have fallen apart. This week I am going to do an analysis of what I have been able to keep up with and what has dropped off. It outlines what activities I am still using discipline and willpower to do (which are more susceptible to breakdowns when stressed) and what seems to have held together (habit).

Starting with the things that have held together. I am still exercising regularly. It feels odd not to go to the gym. Even though some days I have cut down on the intensity and amount of the exercise it is still there. On certain days I cut back on the weight I was lifting and on others I did fewer and/or less effective exercises. Swapping out an exercise for a slightly less effective one may seem completely counter productive, but I have found that when I am not feeling it, the novelty of something different helps raise my interest. It is better to do something sub optimal then nothing at all.

I have still been reading a fair bit. I was reading The Gulag Archipelago which is a book about life in Stalinist Russia. Needless to say it is dark, so for this week I put it down in favor of easier reading. I continue to read one of Seneca’s letters each day and am in the process of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. It is about what causes sudden drastic changes in systems when one would expect more gradual ones. It touches on epidemics of various sorts, fashion, crime, adoption of technology etc. I am also reading more fiction for pure enjoyment. A short story collection by my favourite author Greg Egan is also for fun. It is called Artifacts and I strongly suggest his work if you like very hard science fiction.

School is the area where I have just kept up. Normally I try to work ahead and try to do two weeks of reading for each week that passes. That way when it is time to work on a project or study for a test I have the time to focus solely on that without falling behind. This week was just a week’s worth of reading and I called it at that. Some of the time I would normally spend working on school I spent listening to podcasts on whatever topic I was interested in that day. The learning this week may have been less focussed than usual, and for less total time but it was still there.

So learning, and exercise seem to have held together alright. This makes sense, I have had these practices for a long time. While they have all been ratcheted down in intensity they have continued. This is the advantage of habits, it truly feels odd when I don’t do them for a day.

Now for the areas that have not held up so well under stress. I have not been consistent with my sleep schedule. I have been staying up later and sleeping in more in the morning. Not by a small amount either. 2-4 hours later both in bed and waking time is significant. I have been loath to cut my sleep short, I know how important having enough sleep is especially when your body is under stress. I am not sleeping much more, just not at the times that I prefer.

I have been spending more time on my phone, watching youtube videos mostly. I think the common trend with my behavioural changes this week is that I am leaning towards immediate enjoyment and a little bit of escapism as opposed to longer term thinking. It also makes sense, my brain is trying to make me feel better using the things that reward me quickly. My phone use is not as high as it was the first week. I tracked it and it has been going up since last week. I am also spending more time playing video games. Normally I try to keep them within my off time at the end of the day, but it has creeped out into the rest of my day.

Writing my 10 ideas for the day has been problematic. I normally do it later in my routine so I can use whatever problems I have encountered throughout the day to generate ideas. While under stress I am very mentally drained at the end of the day and it feels insurmountably difficult to come up with ideas when my mind is so occupied. I could try and do it earlier in the day when I am feeling fresher. Something to look into for the next week.

I am doing my best to keep meditating. This is the exact time that it is most needed, but clearly it has not been instilled as a habit yet. Iit has been a lot of work to get myself to sit so this practice has been spotty.

Obviously as this is getting posted a day late this blog falls into that category. I had it written by the end of the day on friday but did not have it edited and posted until saturday.

It is only when under pressure that I can really see how well my routine holds up. A lot of my habits around getting things done have held up reasonably, while self care has fallen apart. That makes sense to me. I have only implemented a lot of the self care and quality of life actions in the last 6-months to a year while the learning and exercising has been an integral part of my life for over a decade.

I still have plenty of time, even though it often does not feel that way, and these things can be fixed. I do tend to focus on giving myself a hard time when I don’t perform up to my standards but I am trying to extract some good from it in the form of a lesson instead. We often learn some of our most valuable lessons from difficult times if we remember to look. The current goal for me is to keep doing whatever I can while I take care of myself. That way I can get through this particular rough patch in life without trying to go so hard that I make it worse and it becomes more than I can handle.

Thanks for reading.

Phone time: 16h 9m