Some Things I’ve Been Bad at, and What I’m Going to do to Change it.

Ed. Note: This is one of those weird public-disclosure blog posts. If you only come here for tech stuff, then move along; nothing to see here. :)

Ed. Note 2: This isn’t a “new years resolution” post. It’s an “I waited way too effing long to do this stuff already” post.

Ed. Note 3: I’m clearly my own editor.

I had an epiphany in the middle of the night last night. I realized two things simultaneously:

1. I suck at taking care of myself in lots of ways, and
2. in that regard, I’m very good at tricking myself by letting things become excuses.

Some ways in which I’m guilty of this:

• I don’t sleep enough.
• I don’t eat well at all (or eat well enough regularly enough).
• I let tasks pile up. Not work things or big things, but little things. Laundry, returning a package, cleaning my room, buying supplies.
• Don’t even get me started on exercise.
• I let work fill in the cracks of my life because I feel responsible or it’s necessary or it feels good/rewarding.

But overall, there was one major theme: instead of making time to keep myself healthy and take care of myself, I’ve been letting the bullshit of being “busy” take away too much from some important things. Generally, I haven’t been respecting the time it takes to do these important things, and as a result have been trying to minimize them or shortcut them.

So I decided to knock it off. Cold turkey. I’m not phasing it in, because I’ve let “busy” distract me from the things I need to do for so long. I’m just doing it, and I’m going to do my best to stop making excuses not to do these things, because there is no excuse not to take better care of myself.

So, What am I Going to Do About It?

For Starters:

• Quit Nutrisystem. Wait, what? This sounds counter-intuitive, I know. I’ve lost some weight on nutrisystem. But its’ is full of sodium, processed, etc. etc. Most importantly in my situation, it became a crutch. I’d cram a bunch of Nutrisystem because I didn’t have time. I’d stop buying fresh food and subsist on their food which is only half of what they tell you to do anyway. So I consumed too much of their food. The effect started reversing itself. And honestly, it just didn’t feel natural. The combination of my methods and the food made me feel like I was eating food for machines. I want to eat food for people, because I want to be more of a person.
• Not rushing to work and instead prepping for my day. I get to work earlier than most people every day anyway. But I wake up, rush, neglect breakfast, taking time to center myself, relaxing, etc. I love the morning, but I don’t appreciate it nearly enough.
• Replace my after-work Starbucks trip with an after-work trip to Giant. They’re in the same damn parking lot, and yet I’ve been neglecting healthy food for its short-term energy supplement.
• Buy fresher things. One technique I’m using is to attempt to spend all my time at Giant in the fresh food sections. If I don’t stray too far from that except for items I know I need, then the stuff I discover should generally be better for me.
• Plan meals better, and plan them for leftovers. I’m one dude. I need better organization for the food I make. I suck at this now, but it’ll be a good challenge. For starters, I’ll attempt to be packing a lunch before work every day.
• Exercise 30 minutes a day. A bare-minimum requirement, but one I haven’t been meeting.
• Drink more water. I received a nice water vessel for Christmas, yet I haven’t used it. Ridiculous. It’s 70% of my body but I’ve been drinking coffee like it’s water. Only water is water.
• Take vitamins. It’s easy as hell to take a vitamin a day.

But most importantly:

• Hold myself to these things as publicly as possible. You’ll be seeing more blog posts like these, with different themes. I hope you’ll indulge me and feel free to comment if you see fit. Be critical, encourage me to do better things. See a better choice I could have made? Add your thoughts. I can fool myself, but I can’t fool you smart people.

Well, now that that’s all out in the open, let’s start this adventure, shall we?