Better Habit Building Initiative

My posts have been getting later and later, it seems, but I'm still on track! This level of persistence is kind of unusual for me, so I'm a little proud. The reason posts have been coming out later is because I'm trying to be more responsible about my "real" life.

In my never-ending, somewhat depressing search for a job, I've gotten a bit lax about my health and habits. Sleeping in til 11 or noon, because what else do I have to do? Eating at weird times and putting no planning into my meals (so, eating ramen for about half of them), and just basically sitting around the house binge watching Netflix and perusing the internet for hours at a time. Which is part of why I sleep in so late; I'm up til 2 exploring internet fun things!

Well, despite all current evidence to the contrary, I hold onto faith that I will eventually (hopefully sooner than that) get a full-time SLP job. So in an effort to force the universe to give me a job through positive thinking, and also, more realistically, to prepare my mind and body for the level of activity a full-time job would put me back into, I've been changing things up this past week.

For starters, I schedule an alarm for myself no more than 8 hours after I lie down for bed. I don't worry about if I don't fall asleep right away or wake up during the night; there is some evidence that we only need 7 hours anyway, but mostly I do this because I'm not quite over my bad bedtime habits so even setting the alarm right at 8 hours puts me waking up at 10 half the time. I don't want to give myself an excuse to stay in bed late (except on weekends) and I also don't want to short change myself out of sleep. It's a balancing act. Plus, when I don't have to be somewhere (again, hopefully this will change soon), I like being up early and seeing the sunrise and being productive. 

(source)
That's so me, because of how I definitely live on the ocean and am male!

I'm also putting more effort into my daily eating schedule. I shower shortly after getting up to help wake myself up, instead of some random time in the middle or at the end of the day, and then I cook myself breakfast, forcing me to exit the suite of rooms fiance and I have claimed in the house. (Our bedroom and bathroom are connected, and we have a fridge, so I could survive the whole day without leaving our space.) And I plan my meals ahead of time, mentally at least, for the whole day to ensure I'm getting nutrients I need and actually eating three times. I've had the unfortunate habit until recently of only eating 2 actual meals, which meant a lot of unnecessary snacking. 

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In another post, I'll explain why this is a healthy breakfast for everyday.

Finally, I've been forcing myself to be more physically active. Around lunch, or as close as I can get, I've started taking Moose on a walk. Before you lecture me about why I should have been doing this before, we have a huge half-acre sized yard in which he gets to run and play all day, so he doesn't need walks. But the walks do provide him with more novel entertainment, plus it's bonding time for us, I can work on his obedience in a new setting, and it forces me to exercise a little. I add a little distance to the walk each day to build on his training and challenge myself. As a consequence of this I've also started drinking a lot more water from my Brita bottle. And as a consequence of that I've been eating less, since I was probably pretty badly dehydrated before and my body was telling me to eat more to get liquids I wasn't getting otherwise.

Because I got spoiled on delicious Memphis water,
I can't drink Nashville water without a filter.

And of course, I am still on the job hunt so I spend time on that each day. All that said to explain that because I'm working on establishing these habits, I want to make sure most if not all of that other stuff is done before I write. It's not that writing and blogging aren't important to me, quite the opposite. I'm so grateful to Google for providing Blogger (among many other services) for free so I have this outlet, and I would love to do this full-time. But I spent several years and thousands of dollars training to become an SLP, and I feel I owe it to myself to at least complete my CF and get my CCCs (see the SLP post linked above if those abbreviations are confusing to you). Plus, realistically, while I am also grateful to all who read my posts, I know my audience is small and my reach is short (for now...?), so this is not something I can count on to pay the bills. As such, while I'll continue to put the same amount of effort into it going forward, it's not my top priority and will probably continue to get left until later in the day.

Since the above is the case, as the final part of my Better Habit Building Initiative I'm going to try to start writing some posts more in advance, at least the night before if not over the weekend. That way when I do get a job (any day now!) it won't affect my ability to post. You might be asking, "Why would it anyway? You're already posting so late! Wouldn't they just go up at the same time, even if you worked til 5?" Good question, imaginary friend. The answer is no, they wouldn't. I like to put research behind most of my posts - with the obvious exception of those like this one and the Daily Smile updates, which are entirely personal,  - add images and videos to accentuate my points and break up the written material, and carefully proofread them in addition to the work of just composing the written content. The fallout is that putting together a single full-size post takes a few hours, so if I waited til after work, they'd be going up more like 8 or 9. And that doesn't even allow for the post-work exhaustion I'm sure to experience at first, being unused to work after all this time, or making/eating dinner. So I will need to do my writing early.

Was that at all interesting? It's just what's on my mind right now, and I thought I'd share a little of my life with you, since that is the point of this whole thing - read the tagline! - so I hope it provided you with a few entertaining moments at the end of your Monday. If you're interested in taking better care of yourself, Hello Giggles recently posted some reader generated content with tips about self-care, and I'd be happy to discuss it as well. If you have tips for me about healthy meals, fun ways to stay active, or possible job openings in the area (haha... sob!), comment that, too! Happy working, my dears!