Wednesday, November 17, 2010

New Habits Are Hard To Form...

Habits are difficult, all around. Old ones are hard to break, new ones hard to form. The easy ones are the ones you don't need, and the hard ones are the habits that'll change your life.
A long standing habit of mine is doing everything according to the "all or nothing" philosophy. Do it all, or not at all; accomplish everything now, or wait until you can. Unfortunately, this has never worked out nearly as well as I would have liked, and often causes more problems than it alleviates. I remember times (a lot of times) when my parents were totally dumbfounded by my antics; instead of writing part of my paper and getting partial credit, I would write part of my paper and turn none of it in, because I was going to give them a whole paper or no paper at all. Stupid? Yes. But it made sense in my head.
Finally, after so many years of being totally aware of this problem, but postponing the date of fixing it (hurray for procrastination being another favorite pastime of mine) I am addressing it. Everything in my life is piling up because I want to start it and finish it in one fell swoop, rather than spreading it out across several days, weeks, and so on. Thus far, this logic has prevented me from starting two (possibly more) books, sewing the tablecloths at work (I've been avoiding that one for a good month now), getting my driver's license, registering to vote, and an alarmingly large amount of other things.
So. It is time to adjust my behavior. I must start doing little things, little chunks of things in the hopes of actually finishing something in a timely manner. I don't know where this habit came from, or what subconscious experiences it is tied to, but I do know that it needs to change.

Thus far, as anticipated, my new method of operating my life has worked out well. I started one of those books. I started a return on a shipment of herbs that, even though I can't finish it today, is now partially done so that when I come in on Saturday, I will not have to do all the work. Huzzah for improvement.

And instead of thinking up more things to say, as I usually want to, I'm going to leave it at this.
Its a horribly boring "update" for all of you who still read on occasion, but thank you anyway.