blog update

Hi all, my apologies for the short hiatus - I was experiencing some technical difficulties (Github Actions randomly broke on me), and admittedly I was also recovering from travel, school, and life, but I do want to stick to my one-post-a-day goal, even if it is back-dated. I’m about a week behind, so I’ll be making 2 posts a day for the next week - one from the previous week and one from today (yesterday) which might be a little confusing. If you want to read them chronologically with how the events occurred vs the order in which I wrote the posts, maybe come back in a week to read them all.

I also wanted to make a short note about habits - I moved to Japan with goals/habits I wanted to build (outside of the Japan/travel-specific stuff): 1. blog, 2. exercise (run?), 3. keep apartment/room clean + tidy every day (or as frequently as possible). Many people I know seem to be able to accomplish these things effortlessly (or at least, that’s what it appears to me on the outside). On the other hand (which may be obvious for those who have lived with me or know my personal life well), I don’t have any consistent habits. My room has always been a disaster. Exercising is the bane of my existence. And every time I’ve moved I’ve told myself the next chapter of my life is going to be different, and it’s always reverted back to what it was like before.

I came across this article about habits which perhaps explains why behaviors I admire in other people just don’t seem to apply to me, no matter how hard I try (I don’t think I’ve been trying very hard to be honest). But I’m trying a new approach this time. I think I’ve been setting expectations too high for myself right off the bat that as soon as I fall short of it, I instantly revert back to my old self. For example, maybe my room is spotless when I move in, but as soon as “the mess” starts accumulating, there’s no hope left for it. I might set out to run every day, but as soon as I wake up one morning a little tired or busy, the habit dissolves. There are 3 things I’ve observed so far:

• 1. Don’t be too hard on yourself - if you slip up, that’s totally normal. But continuing to put effort into your habits at a 90% rate is much better than 0%. Maybe lower the bar for yourself - run every other day instead of every day. Maybe set the goal as making sure the room is completely clean once a week instead of every day, but bonus points if it gets cleaned more often than that.
• 2. On the same lines of not being too hard on yourself, when you do slip up, observe why without beating yourself up or being judgemental. When I first moved to Japan, I was waking up at 5am every day, writing a blog post and going on a run before Miles and Steven were even awake. It was like I was born a new person. Then I left for the ski trip to Hakuba and when I returned, I noticed I lost all my newly acquired habits. I was still waking up pretty early, but I was reverting back to my old, far less productive habits, such as laying in bed on my phone scrolling on social media for at least an hour or two. My first instinct was to tell myself, “well, guess I’ve exposed who I truly am - a lazy bum. My new life was too good to be true.” But then I realized, well, the reason why I was waking up and instantly getting out of bed before was because my phone was charging on the opposite side of the room, but I had since moved the charger right next to me. I still have a phone addiction, but the act of physically getting out of bed does reduce the activation energy to do other things. And literally as I am writing this, I am realizing that the reason why my “good” habits felt so natural is when Steven was here, he was sleeping on the couch, which means there was no couch for me to lounge around on watching Youtube videos or scrolling on my phone. Am I going to get rid of the couch? No…but at least I’m slightly more aware of my weaknesses.
• 3. Accountability. I was a little nervous to tell people widely about my blog, but it’s actually really helpful for people to prod me and ask me when the next post is, and to believe that there is actually some external expectation here. The blog posts are really for me, but even the knowledge that future me will be disappointed that I didn’t document things properly is enough to keep me going. With regards to keeping the house tidy, Miles and I both have had really messy rooms, but I know we both have the ability to clean really well. I told him that I wanted us to keep the room clean, and he laughed at first, but we have been holding each other accountable and taking this seriously since. It feels a bit silly, but I feel really good when my life is in order, and even though getting there may not come naturally to me, the positive outcome is really motivating.

Well, it’s only been 25 days since arriving in Japan so I’ll continue to keep tabs on how these habits will evolve to become a natural part of my life or break down. At least now that I’ve written them down for the public to see, that’s just another layer of accountability.