Tag Archives: habits

Returning to Writing

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Sorry, I’ve become a bit hit and miss recently. Yesterday it occurred to me that it’s a good thing I’m not still at work,  because I’d have been off for most of the last month. It’s a lot more relaxing being retired than it was when i was simply off work. One day I may examine the difference, but for now I will just say that as a pensioner, the pay is better than when you are merely ill, and for some reason the time passes more easily.

The sun is going down as I type, though there is plenty of time to go before the sky takes on any colour. At the moment it is merely sinking and the light is shining off the various leaves in the garden. Holly, privet, roses, bamboo, conifers are all reacting differently to the light – some reflecting it, others allowing it to shine through, and it is quite an interesting garden view, considering that it is mainly green.

It feels like I’m returning to writing again, after a lay off of several months. I have not submitted anything since March and missed a couple of significant submission chances last month. Time to get back in the game before I lose the habit. In coaching they used to say it only takes a fortnight to lose a habit, which is awkward, considering that most people take a two week holiday, almost ensuring they they lose all their good habits. This has always given me pause for thought.

Twenty years ago, as I think I told you in a previous post, I did actually stop writing and it took me years to get back into the swing of things, It took me something like two years of constant practice to start producing usable pieces, even though I wrote thousands of words a week. This blog is a result of some of those early practice attempts.

I’m hoping it will be easier this time. I had better give it a serious go tonight, as there’s only a week left until submissions windows close at the end of the month and both the journals in question are ones I would like to be in.

Stone on the Floor

The Nap Trap and Problems with Class

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Last night I got stuck with the sandwiches.

“I feel very tired,” said Julia, yawning. “Can you do the sandwiches?”

Well, I can’t really say no, seeing as she does more housework than I do. I, on the other hand, do more eating, poetry and driving than she does, but I never get any credit for this when the subject of my laziness comes up for discussion.

The sandwiches are cheap paté from ASDA and the vegetarian accompaniment is sliced water melon. It beats carrot sticks. However, carrot sticks are probably better for me. Cardboard would probably be better for me too, as it would fill me up without too much in the way of salt, sugar or carbs.

The evening started badly when I made up for my poor overnight sleep with two substantial naps. The second started around 11pm and lasted until 1.30am, which is always bad news. At that time I get up feeling like I need bed but have to make sandwiches. This in turn wakes me up, meaning I sleep badly and will then fall into the nap trap again.

Really I should just go to bed then get up early to make sandwiches, but I’d be so scared of oversleeping that I’d never get off to sleep properly.

The real solution is, I suppose, to make the sandwiches at 4pm when I return home, but I have always made them as late as possible to keep them fresh. It’s one of those habits you get into. I always feel that if you leave it late you can use things like cucumber and tomato, which would make the sandwich too soggy if left for too long.

Do you have any old-established habits which you would like to change?

When I win the lottery I will have Julia send the butler down at regular intervals with sandwiches, fresh fruit salad and ice cream. I’d probably have a fresh shirt delivered for the afternoon too, though I’m not sure if that would be a job for the butler or whether I’d need a valet for that. That’s the trouble with being brought up as working class in a class-ridden society – no matter how much money you may dream of winning, there’s always that basic insecurity of never being quite sure which servant does which job.

 

 

Nottingham U16s

Sports, Snake Oil and a Senior Moment

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In sports coaching, they say that it only takes two weeks to break a habit. I’ve even heard an Olympic athlete say that it isn’t self-discipline that keeps people training, it’s habit. When the kids said they wanted to take up sport I told them one thing – that I would support them but that they wouldn’t be allowed to come home from school and tell me they didn’t feel like training that night. The only acceptable way was to arrange it in advance because they had something else to do. I didn’t mind them having a social life but they had to have structure.heir training. As result, even when it meant one of them spending two hours on buses to get to training (I had to give the other one a lift somewhere else that night) we never missed a night’s training unless we’d planned to do so.

Four months ago I had more than two weeks off and I broke then habit of daily posting on WordPress. It always takes a lot more effort to establish a habit than to break it, and it’s taking more time and effort than I thought to get back into it. Same for reading WordPress, writing poetry and checking eBay. They are all broken habits that I’m finding hared to re-establish. The only habit I’ve successfully restarted is procrastination. Ironic really, that I wasted no time in starting to procrastinate once I was well.

The difficulty in trying to re-establish a good habit is covered in the material I’ve had from the NHS on-line weight loss programme. You get a choice of several organisations which will provide support in your efforts to lose weight and keep it off. The one I selected seems to give off many of the vibes I associate with  snake oil salesmen. But that, of course, may just be me. Or it might be that I didn’t need a team of bright and bouncy people to tell me that the way to lose weight is to eat less. I knew that without watching a video.

Meanwhile, regarding “Senior Moments”, I got up this morning with the intention of going for a blood test, checked the time, and realised that the test is next Wednesday. I really must get a diary and start writing things down.

 

Decisions…

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I’ve delivered Julia to work, I’ve re-set my car clock to GMT and I’ve had a drive round to look at nature from the inside of a heated car.

I hadn’t intended driving round so didn’t have a notebook with me, and have returned with two haiku and a couple of notes scribbled on the back of a car park ticket. I keep meaning to get a recorder to carry with me – this phone doesn’t seem to offer that facility.

I’m now facing a big decision. Do I do the laundry or do I write a post? I think you can probably guess the answer from the fact you are reading this.

It will save time later, as the days soon pass and I’m so disorganised that it could easily be close to midnight before I actually press the button to publish. That’s what happened last night. I  started writing around 7.00 and it was close to midnight when I eventually posted. It didn’t, as you may guess, take me five hours to write. But somehow I managed to fill the rest of the time with eating, napping, watching TV, talking to Julia and surfing eBay.

At the moment “out of control” is the theme of my life. The garden needs tidying, the house needs a serious declutter and I have letters to write regarding both health and finance – all important stuff.

I have also lost control of my haiku. I don’t know how many I’ve written on my challenge (though it is at least ten a day, so I’m keeping up with it) and I still have a lot to edit,  type and index. It’s the indexing that’s tricky. They don’t have titles. They don’t lend themselves to numbering due to my habit of making and keeping multiple edits. Quite often they have the same first line (see previous comments on multiple edits). All in all they are slippery little creatures and trying to keep them under control is like trying to herd hamsters.

Looks like I’m going to have to look at numbering again, or risk upsetting an editor.

This post marks 21 successive days of posting. Early days yet, but I’m starting to establish a habit.

At this point the 21 days could be significant, as the old saying is that it takes 21 days to form a habit. This, as with so many things, is a myth. Newer research indicates that it takes between 18 and 254 days to form a habit.

Writing haiku, which was a development of my normal poetry writing only seemed to take a week to take hold but my broken blogging habit doesn’t feel established after 21 days. Eating salad would probably take 254 days to become a habit. Even at 254 days it wouldn’t so much be a case of forming a habit, more like breaking my spirit and me losing the will to live.