Day 356…
In the millions of consecutive days that I have been washing dishes lately, one of things that I have discovered is that if you let a wet pot just sit for a few seconds that gravity pulls most of the water down to the bottom and you can then just tip it out rather than having to dry it all.
You can also just leave the wet things out and they dry themselves, of course, but sometimes Michael needs the counters, so I need to get everything away. I realized this morning as I was rinsing out the coffee presses that I was automatically leaving them to sit on the counter for a minute before I started to dry them.
According to popular thought, it takes 21 days to form a new habit. As with everything, there’s a bit more to it than that.
Four researchers at University College in London wrote a paper called How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world, and published it in 2009 in the European Journal of Psychology. In an earlier 1960 book, Dr. Maxwell Maltz referenced the 21-day thought and based on his own casual observance gave it some credence. It stuck, so the UK psychologists wanted to see if they could back it up.
What they found was that the time it took from the initial moment of planning through to the point that the action became automatic, or, in other words, a habit, took anywhere from 18 to 254 days.
Starting with the idea that a repeated action is the basis for forming a habit, the researchers asked 96 participants to, “repeat a behaviour of their choice, in response to a cue, in an everyday setting, and complete a measure of automaticity on a daily basis.” It was a team of Brits, so they spelled everything in the British way with extra u’s.
The subjects were asked to carry out the new behavior in the same situation each day. Instead of doing whatever it was at a certain time, they would do it, say, after they had eaten or before they worked out so that it started to become associated with that activity. Drink a bottle of water with lunch or run for 15 minutes before dinner were two of the kind of things that the participants chose to do.
Previous studies seemed to indicate that some sort of reward was necessary in order to incentivize the creation of the habit. Given that the participants chose their own habit to form, the leaders of the study made the assumption that achieving it would be reward enough.
There are three main features of habits - lack of awareness, lack of control and efficiency. In addition to those, there are two others - history of repetition and identity. Unsurprisingly, simple actions, such as eating and drinking, were found to create habits faster than more complex ones like exercising.
When everything first shut down almost a year ago now, we all formed new habits. We were all put in a new situation and we had to figure out what to do. We got used to doing certain things at certain times and even had to figure out how to do some new things. Nearly a year has passed at this point and we will likely never lose some of the new behaviors we have created.
In the first few months, the running joke was the COVID 15 - the extra pounds that everyone put on while stress-eating. We all needed immediate comfort and food was the easiest path to that goal. At the point where the anxiety of being locked down was starting to let up, the election process started which kept everything at a fever pitch and the comforting behaviors kept going and got more entrenched.
In recent weeks, with the election and inauguration behind us, I have been able to make the conscious decision to change some of the habits that I’ve created. I have been trying to eat better and actually carry it through. The weight is starting to come off and I find myself within spitting distance of where I’d like to be.
In normal times, my schedule was so unpredictable and erratic that coming up with any sort of exercising or nutritional routine was almost impossible. I would start to get into a groove in one situation but then it would completely change, and I’d have to start all over again in a new place.
Living in a hotel in the middle of nowhere can make finding decent food difficult if not impossible. Being in tech is so time consuming that trying to squeeze exercise in becomes beyond challenging. For me when the choice comes down to exercise or sleep, I will pick sleep every time.
Now, obviously, we are not living in normal times. My schedule is nothing if not utterly routine.
Writing these posts every day started out as a conscious decision on my part to try and put what was going on around me into some sort of context. That people started reading them was both gratifying and alarming in equal measure.
When there started to be an expectation that I would post every day, I started to worry about how I would be able to keep going. I decided to keep going as long as I could and told myself that I would stop when I ran out of things to say. That “out” that I gave myself took away the anxiety and allowed me to form what is now very much a habit. I spend the first 2-4 hours of each day writing and I don’t think about it at all.
Very occasionally, knowing that there is something that is going to get in the way of that, I will write most of a post the evening before or try and figure out how to do it out in the world, but those occasions are rare.
For the most part, I have no idea what I am going to write about until I sit down and start. Sometimes, when I am about half-way through, I think, “Really? This is what you are going to publish?” but I honestly have stopped worrying about it. I think about the writing as I am doing it, but I do not think about the act of it at all. It has very much become an actual habit.
So, has walking. The only thing that I think about around walking is how to protect myself from the elements. Pouring rain is no fun to walk in at all, but I am pretty much driven to do it regardless. I don’t even give much thought to where I am going to go.
Michael and I have long gotten into the habit of only eating two meals a day and it never crosses my mind to add in a third. I am now firmly in the early days of attempting to form new habits around what I am eating. I want to take advantage of what looks to be a good stretch of time ahead of us where I will still be on the same schedule to let it sink in.
The threats to our Democracy seem, at the moment, to be more existential than actual. There is a very real possibility that the far right will rise again, but, currently, there are still more of us than there are of them.
The Republicans are dividing. It remains to be seen whether the portion of them that are gathering around the ex-President and firmly embracing white supremacy will attract more people than they will repel them.
As opposed to the insurrection which was a very real event with clear and present dangers unfolding in real time, this massing of forces by the far right is a slower process that is going to unfold over the next months and years.
The ex-President gave voice to these people, but his voice has been largely silenced. He has not yet figured out how to communicate with his base on a daily basis. The sheer volume of his rants and lies has been enormously reduced. There is plenty of time to think about them now. I truly hope that his supporters are thinking about them and maybe beginning to see them for what they are.
The so-called “basket of deplorables” has always been there. The last Administration emboldened them to reveal themselves, but their existence is nothing new. Huge KKK rallies were hardly uncommon throughout the country. The KKK wasn’t eradicated it was just driven underground.
The press, in their quest for ratings, seems to feel that they need to keep the “villains’ of the piece active to hold our anxious interest, so the coverage of them seems out of proportion.
I certainly am not for one minute discounting the threat that a radicalized-right poses to our country, but right now, on March 2nd, it isn’t taking up all of my bandwidth.
I always thought that if I had the time that I would like to try and write. Suddenly, I was given the time and I was able to do it with enough repetition that it has now become a habit. I said that I was going to stop these daily posts when I hit a year which, much to my surprise, is next Thursday. It seemed to me that I would likely start working again this spring and that I wouldn’t be able to keep this up. Now, I am not so sure.
We aren’t through this yet. I am not ready to give up what creating these does for me in terms of putting what’s happening in the world into some kind of manageable perspective. I am also aware that they are being read.
After next Thursday, I am going to keep writing them but just not every day. On the days that I don’t publish one, I will be working on another writing project that, if it goes well, maybe will be published as a whole. The pictures I post every Sunday will keep going. Those are inextricably linked to my habit of walking around the city and I have no plans at all to stop doing that.
I want to ensure that this writing habit that I’ve formed keeps going for myself, if nothing else. I also want to leave myself open to whatever work might come my way. Until the stimulus bill passes, our unemployment payments are going to stop at the end of next week, too. We’ve been down this road before so I’m not going to panic yet.
But…
I have been trying to drop 10 pounds for a decade.
Whatever weight your body stays in for a period of time, your body adjusts to and starts to believe that that is its proper weight. Diets fail in large part because when you lose that weight, even if it is just fat, your body thinks that it is in distress and does everything it can to convince you to put it back on. I found it easy to lose the extra COVID pounds but not these last 10. The COVID pounds were new, the 10 not so much.
The trick is to get to your goal weight slowly and methodically and then to stay there for a few months. I have been successful at the first part several times. I have not been successful at all at the second part.
As long as the right doesn’t try to stage another coup, I’m feeling pretty confident that I should be able to do it this time. Might be able to. Should be able to.
I am truly grateful to everyone who reads these. You have all been complicit in the forming of my writing habit. Knowing that there is an expectation and that I have a deadline, however self-imposed, has been a genuine gift and I thank you all for it.
In a far more practical vein, no, we did not get to the cat’s claws yesterday.
I know that we truly need to get into the habit of doing it. The more we do it, the less traumatic for all three of us it will be. It will start to become normal for him and maybe, as a result, less of an assault.
I’m finishing writing a little early today so maybe we will finally get to it. Michael is humming Sondheim which usually means that he’s done with what he needs to do and is relaxed. The cat is curled up next to me and oblivious.
Unfortunately, Michael has just now started making breakfast.
So maybe after.
💞Oh no....oh ok.... well, not really more like sort of ok...feel like I’m loosing a vital connection to the real world
In other words ...love your posts and also love all the things you need to do for yourself... need me to come and help Ziggy get her pedicure?
xoxo 💞❤️