In Which I Ramble About Personal Projects and Such

This is a fairly stream-of-consciousness post where I ponder how to fit all the things I want to do into my day.  Enjoy it for what it is.

I spend most of my evenings doing "free-time" activities, mostly consisting of browsing the Internet, playing computer games and watching TV.  On occasion, I have been known to read a book.  Of course, there are times when something needs to be addressed and I take care of it.  But, for the most part, it leads to an evening that, while enjoyable, is devoid of any other benefit than entertainment.

I have things I plan and dream about, but don't take the time to implement.  Special events are good for addressing those times, like when I was able to leverage NaNoWriMo during November last year and wrote 50k words in a month.  But, that rough draft of a novel is in desperate need of editing, and I just cannot seem to find the time to even look at it again.  I have ideas for video games I'd like to write, but am not writing them.

Important things are being neglected: I don't exercise at all.  Really, I should be doing some sort of minimal exercising daily, but just cannot find the time.

I think I need to schedule things a little better.  If I can create a routine that I follow, it might make it easier.  Fortunately, since I have a daughter and have a routine for her, it might be easier to leverage her routine and plug my elements in as needed.

The first thing to address is my neglect of exercise.  While I have time to do this in the evening, it isn't normally considered a good idea to workout so close to bedtime.  So, that leaves me with the options of working out at lunch, or getting up earlier and working out before work.  Lunchtime is pretty limited with regard to how much time I can spend, and I would definitely need a shower if I did a full-fledged workout at lunchtime.  So, that leaves the morning. 

For me, the holy grail of getting more things done seems to be getting up an hour early, in that it is the solution to all my problems, while also being completely unattainable.  We have a fairly decent routine of the whole household waking up at 7am because of a shared alarm.  However, we are all still dragging our feet when it comes to getting up at that time.  If I was, somehow, able to follow through with my mythical "get up early and do x, y or z" plan, I would have every goal I ever set for myself accomplished before I even really began the day.  Whether or not it is attainable, this is really the ideal time for exercise for me.  I think I will have to just keep trying to get up early until it finally "sticks."

The other things I want to take care of are easy to place time wise, at least in theory.  Really, after Katy goes to bed, I should spend x amount of time on editing my book and y amount of time working on my video game development.  Problem with that is, Katy is in bed at 8:15: if I assume a minimum of an hour for each task, it is suddenly 10:15, not leaving much time for other things.  I tend to either give something all or nothing, and I switch between the modes.  When I was writing my novel in November, I really didn't spend time doing anything else.  Now, I am spending no time the novel at all.  Finding a happy medium and maintaining it I think would be a preferable strategy.

I come home for lunch nearly every day.  If I spent my lunch hour editing my novel, that would give about 30-45 minutes a day.  That would free up time after work for also making progress on my video game development.

Something that I have been doing at work is closely tracking my time.  Not only which projects I am spending time on, but also which tasks on those projects.  The very act of recording the time makes me aware of how I am spending it and makes it easier for me to look for other, smaller tasks to fill in gaps.  I am considering trying to log my non-work hours in a similar way, just to see how I am spending my free time.  It might become obvious how I can fit other things more easily into my day, or what I can cut out or reduce.

100 Drop

Boy, it was easy to fall off the 100 Push Ups wagon.  I stalled about week four and never got back into the swing of it.  My interest just never recovered and I'm not sure if that is necessarily a bad thing; push ups are good, but they are a very specific way to exercise and there are probably better, more inclusive ways to work out.

Something that has gotten my attention lately has been Crossfit.  The ideology there is to focus on increasing Power output by working not just focusing on strength.  They post a daily workout that looks like it is rarely the same, which is good because my major hangup about working out is that I get bored and it feels like work too often.  I think that I will try to get some of the minimal equipment I am missing to effectively do this.

I suspect that doing the daily exercise on a regular basis will help me achieve the 100 push up mark indirectly.

Normal Looking Nails

As I described previously, I had been in the habit of biting my nails and have been having success at preventing any further biting. While I will still occasionally absentmindedly put my finger in or near my mouth. I am conscious of it, however, and if I notice I am repeatedly doing it, I will find a squishy-ball or something else I can hold or do with my hands.

I have actually been successful enough at this that I have had to trim my nails. At least, I felt like I needed to trim them: after years of biting nails too short, it is hard to tell what is the right length; it also feels weird when areas that are used to being exposed to air are suddenly covered.

If anyone else if having a hard time with this, the steps I found that made the biggest difference follow:

1. Actively pursue not biting your nails. In the past, whenever I had thought about biting my nails, I always hoped that I could stop. This time, however, I actively kept it in my mind and really analyzed when and why I was doing it.
2. Keep your hands busy. For me, I was often biting my nails when I had nothing for my hands to do. By finding a squishy-ball to play with, or just something to actively think about keeping in both hands, was often enough to make it to inconvenient or noticeable to myself when I would come close to biting again.
   
3. Moisturize cuticles and nails frequently. As a guy, I frequently ignore all of that moisturizing stuff. Unless my hands are really cracked and suffering, I am unlikely to use hand cream. However, many times I found that a reason I was picking or biting at my nails and cuticles was not because I was nervous or bored, but because the skin was dry and was being irritated. Coating the entire nail area helped correct dry skin and made it less likely for me to chew on myself.
4. Maintain nails. While looking for something to do with my hands, I would occasionally grab my swiss army knife and use the filing appendage to clean and shape the nails. This helped additionally because without the rough edges or dirty nails, there was no legitimate reason to bite at them.
5. Don't do it by yourself. When I decided to stop biting my nails, I knew an easy way to do it was with accountability. So, I posted here about it, but I also told all my friends that they should tell me to stop biting my nails if they saw me doing it. Since I didn't want to have them constantly annoying me, I had additional incentive to catch and prevent the behavior myself.

It is hard to say if I am completely successful and done with the process of breaking this bad habit. While I am doing well right now, what is to say that when I am truly tested I won't resort to gnawing at my fingertips? I guess continued, careful monitoring will be the only way to tell. Once I have fully grown my cuticles again, I will consider it a success.

One Hundred Pushups

In my ongoing pursuit of self-improvement, I stumbled upon a website, onehundredpushups. The concept is that by following the simple program laid out on the site, after six weeks you should be able to do 100 uninterrupted push ups. Since I have been trying to do push ups in the morning when I wake up, anyways, I figured that this would be a fun way to motivate me to actually continue doing it every morning.

Today, I did the initial test, which is to do as many push ups as you can. I got to 31. I think I might have been able to get a couple more if I pushed myself, but I would like to start the program Monday morning and didn't want to deplete my energy reserves too much. At any rate, it puts me at Level 4.

Monday morning, I am going to begin Week 1. I'll report my progress later.

Bad Habits Die Hard

Several weeks ago, I decided that enough was enough: it was time to stop biting and picking my fingernails. I knew it was unlikely that I'd be able to do it cold turkey, so I did a bit of research online to see what others were saying about stopping the bad fingernail biting habit.

Most of what I found seemed to suggest putting foul tasting stuff on the fingernails, but I didn't want to have awful tasting food. The one really good tip, however, was to put moisturizer on the areas around the nails. Since that was the area that I bit the most frequently, it helps not having dry, itchy, pick-able skin.

The other thing I am trying, which I didn't really see suggested anywhere, is to find something else to do with your hands. When I find that I am putting my fingers near my mouth, I grab a squishy-ball and play with that absentmindedly instead of absentmindedly biting at my fingernails.

Also, being aware of when I am most likely to bite at my nails helped me devise good strategies to prevent it. For me, TV/movie watching tends to be a key time, so I try to keep things in my hands instead. Also, when I am nervous or thoughtful about something. Just being aware of it helps as well. Since I already carry a Swiss Army USB drive (with a file, scissors and knife included), I let my hands play with cleaning and filing the nails.

As I mentioned, it has been several weeks since I've started and I am doing very well. Now, my nails might be getting long enough to actually warrant trimming. At the very least, they are long enough to tap annoyingly on my desk. However, now that they are this long, resisting the temptation to put them in my mouth has become much harder. My fingertips feel a little funny and I definitely notice the nails. So, instead of biting them, I am keeping them busy typing this.

Seems like the urge has passed, so mission accomplished.