Tag: habits

A Habitual Moon

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It’s a full moon today so energy will be high. How fun that it’s also Halloween. How sad that everyone will be stuck inside in front of Zoom screens. Apparently one aspect of a full moon, or at least the affect upon us, is that we revert to our strongest habits. You won’t be able to prove that in a lab so I imagine it’ll be down to some empirical research of sorts to understand that. With us viewing the world and experiences through a presupposed narrative, I assume that empirically our understanding will be deeply flawed. A leap of faith, well it may just be necessary. Regardless I do enjoy trying to understand habits, they seem rather powerful after all.

I’m reading a book at the moment on fear and not in a typical challenge you fears kind of way but more learn to love and see the positives of fear. I’m only a quarter of the way through so I haven’t fully grasped it but there does appear to be some legitimacy in what he says. It’s called Fearvana by Akshay Nanavati if you’re curious. I won’t go into what Fearvana is exactly, mainly because I’ve not read enough that I’ll likely do it a disservice. What made me think about it though was that he mentions something about synapses in our brains which we have developed over a long time. Connections between neural pathways or something like that. Anyway these are the animalistic responses we have to situations, the habitual response we have learnt to make.

It’s another way of looking at how we behave but it’s interesting to think of it that way when observing how we behave and respond, and this can be to anything. Instead of just thinking about how this is habit, looking behind it at the science seems to help understand how malleable our behaviour is. If it’s just connections in our brain which have formed, it also means they can reform. Without saying certain things can be good or bad, we definitely have more and less desirable habits which we decide upon personally. It’s very liberating to realise what they actually are and with the brick wall coming down it also makes them surmountable.

So this full moon, observe yourself. What is it that seems to have been building up this last week especially. How do you find yourself responding to it. Do you recognise anything familiar in your behaviour, good and bad, desirable and undesirable. Can you detach yourself from it and see it for what it is. Just that first try will do. Just observe. Don’t judge and don’t box yourself. Step back. Step back from it all.

One More Piece Of Track

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I sometimes wonder if I’m obsessed with habits. Partly this comes down to spending years moving around and in a way desiring the time for routine and such things. Not being fixed like a robot but just having a familiarity with how the day will unfold and what that means at certain times. Had I not been in one place these last ten months this whole experiment would have unfolded differently. Certainly I thought the summer pieces would have been full of travel and sailing adventures which would have been interesting but there’s every chance life would have been busy in a different way and possibly affected what has still managed to be one piece a day. Having a routine these ten months has helped this to happen.

I left yesterday then as I mentioned, well, yesterday, and am now at my parents until late next Tuesday. I have plenty of time on my hands now so no excuse not to write this but I am having to adapt to a new routine. That’s not overly challenging but it does require discipline to sit down when I don’t know how the day will unfold. You can’t wait until later in the day because you don’t know how later will unfold. This will likely become even more apparent next week when I find myself in Greece. How my days will unfold is anyone’s guess and like over Christmas when I was in Dublin it will likely be a case of grab any opportunity I can.

The reason I go into this is because I found myself watching random television tonight and being unsure when it would allow me the time to sit down and do this. I was going to write about the documentary on trains I watched but like happens regularly I end up just rambling as I begin writing. Trains are really cool. They influenced local and world events. The Indian railway system allowed for Indian Independence while also in a way being a positive of British rule. That’s one way of spinning it at least. The Brits also tried to build a railway from Cairo to Cape Town and got about half way, through some of the most beautiful and arduous terrain. The Russian Revolution became a possibility as the Railway Union backed the Bolsheviks during the revolution and subsequent civil war. That’s without even mentioning the remarkable Trans Siberian railway. I really want to do the trip from Cape Town to Victoria Falls. Trains are probably my favourite form of transport because they take you through wilderness in a way that roads going from town to town can’t.

I watched this program then and it reminded me how much I enjoy doing things and going places. Is that a habit? The habit of choosing the adventurous option. In a way it’s probably something learnt from what life has provided me until now. I’ve learnt this is not just an option but an option I thrive in. It could also be the habit of running away from the challenge of living a life of repetition and work, the struggles that that involves. Life is but nuance and a multitude of credible and rational explanations it appears after all. And like a slow steam train ambling through countryside, this is but one more section of track in search of the elusive final instalment.

To Find True Freedom

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We get used to things. I’ve discussed habits probably as much as anything else on here but this is slightly different. This would be more about adapting. We adapt to our environment then. When we stay in one place or in one environment long enough it becomes normal and we find a way to at the very least survive. In the extreme you could have someone going from a position of power and wealth to one of poverty and subjugation, think of any successful class based revolution for example. If they didn’t end up getting their head chopped off, end up in front of a firing squad or find a way of smuggling themselves out of the country; there is a good chance they would have to either adapt to their new way of live or die. That then is an extreme example and for me right now I am as far from that as I can think. I have adapted to my surroundings though, my admittedly comfortable surroundings.

For me this adaptation has been more about a change in a way of life. Having spent ten years as a traveller living wild and being free – that is the version my romanticised ego would like to portray – I found myself in this little village by the seaside. It was only supposed to be a couple of months, the winter at most with spring bringing new adventures. There is no need to go over this years events but as I’ve previously discussed they have been habit changing to say the least. Now though I potentially change these new habits again and see whether further ones are created or old ones return. Today is Friday, on Sunday I leave my home by the sea.

Undoubtedly there has been a lot I’ve enjoyed about life here. I’m beside the sea and when not rammed with summer tourists it’s slow and chilled out. It is though a bit backwards and insular which is enough to push me away, but it has also shown me enough to imagine a new way of life is possible. There were many times in my past travelling in which I openly admitted to being exhausted and tired of constantly moving and packing but I also really enjoyed the discovery and constant new in front of my eyes. I’m still after all this time like a child when I see something previously unseen. This time has made me realise I am in my heart a wandering traveller. It has also made me realise how easily I could settle somewhere too given the right conditions. It’s all about balance apparently. This mythical never been seen or fully understood beast called balance. But you can’t have balance when you want it all.

As I pack my now enlarged pile of stuff I realise I am happy to move on while also not being entirely keen on the exhaustive side of this moving on. The stepping into the unknown excites and the prospect of being free is overjoying. As I would have discussed yesterday though had I not got distracted by Miley Cyrus, freedom is an entirely mental construct. We need to find freedom internally, allow the mind to accept the ever increasing randomness of existence and responsibly live in the moment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re stuck in the endless toil of menial labour or sailing the ocean. Admittedly one is probably easier to feel free in and we can do ourselves favours with the environment we exist in, but as I said, it’s how we approach existence that matters. One more moment before the next then in this constantly testing journey to free the mind. Maybe that would be a good habit to create. I already have the key after all. I could get used to finally being free. Just be careful not to want it too much.

A Disciplined Ramble

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Life is funny. Life is full of surprises. We think we have it all worked out and then something comes along to remind us we have no idea. We have no control. I have been criticised in the past for just going with what comes in front of me and forgetting everything else and in some ways there is validity in that. Living in the moment is great, being present is real but so are things that you can’t see. But then there is also a lot to be said about going with whatever twists and turns life’s rollercoaster throws at you. Part of that is embracing the good things that come up but with that we must also embrace the struggles. It may feel like what you are faced with, whatever daunting prospect you see blocking your way, is inhibiting you and preventing you from finding happiness but we never know what series of events will unfold because of it. Maybe, just maybe, something will come into our life that brings some happiness but that thing wouldn’t have had those more negative events first not come. It is important to remember this when we feel everything is lost. I could relate this to the virus, but I could very easily relate it to something else, or anything in fact. It’s just nice to discover something positive from events which haven’t turned out as we originally thought they might.

I haven’t re-read that but what a ramble I imagine it was. It’s been a long day and i’m already into the next. The early hours of the morning. This isn’t going to be a vintage piece and it’s another day of learning more about discipline. It’s genuinely interesting, for me at least, to see how natural and easy it is to write each day now. I’m so tired, it’s 2am and I really want to sleep but I’m here writing this. It can’t be that far off six months I’ve written every day. Every bloody day despite what has been going on around me. It might not always be exciting for you but fuck, it’s amazing what not wanting to have a public fail will force a person to do. What is interesting though is that I have seen changes in my daily approach to things. While I still have idle moments if I need to focus my energy on something undoubtedly I am far more capable of it that in the past. I genuinely think I have learnt and become a more disciplined man in my everyday life from this. From forcing myself to write no matter what. Habits are everything. Just imagine what kind of an enlightened being I’ll be in another six months. Look out world.

The Art Of Procrastinating

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Procrastinating really is an art form when done at it’s finest. I sat down an hour ago at my computer to do some work on something and knowing I had a little more time than usual decided to just have a little browse of the easy thoughtless websites I usually like kill time with. My version of those are football related and I can easily spend an hour reading the latest news, transfer gossip, he said / she said stories that don’t require much thought. Perhaps that is why they do so well; they grab you with click-bait style headlines and then are usually written so simply the mind needs to put in only the minimum effort to read them. They are also addictive. Facebook is the other procrastinator but while football is seemingly still there, I have managed to give up bothering with it much beyond emails to other people and obviously posting these blog pieces. Twitter and Instagram? Don’t be silly.

Why do we procrastinate then? Is this another example of a lack of discipline? Procrastinating is about doing something else, usually thoughtless and a waste of time, to avoid doing something more important and likely more challenging. Even this piece today is in itself procrastinating; just as I finally closed the football related windows I realised how much I had just been wasting time for the last hour and how I was still stuck in the old habits of the past. Why not write about it then and while I need to write something today, there is probably a slight avoidance in this action by doing it at this moment.

We all procrastinate though and modern society is just full of opportunities. If it’s not football news it’s Facebook. If not that it’s some stupid click-bait site giving you thirty moments someone you don’t actually care about either embarrassed themselves or didn’t wear make-up. Struggling with not enough click-bait then why not play some kind of addictive game on your phone or become a zombie to short YouTube videos. These are all technological methods but what did people do before Nokia kicked it all off with it’s highly memorable Snake game? People must have still procrastinated but I was about sixteen then so it’s hard to say. Maybe doodling was more common, people certainly read newspapers more but that’s not solely a procrastinating thing. Genuinely I don’t know. Perhaps I can find out online, that should kill some more time.