February's Habit: Reading for an hour - reflection

Our monthly habit-changing list is now two months complete:

• January - no alcohol - way easier than anticipated!
• February - read for an hour each day (that should be easy, shouldn't it?)...

Soon after starting this challenge we introduced a proviso: read for an hour each day quickly turned into "... each weekday" as neither of us wanted to prioritise the time for reading during our weekends. We discovered that to each of us, weekend time was more precious than reading time, so we couldn't make ourselves sit down and read (not that we tried very hard).

So after that immediate scale-back we then piously turned off the TV at 8.30pm each night, in order to give us time for an hour of reading before bed. This was a habit I quickly came to enjoy, but Mike found that an hour of reading at night was too long for him (especially from no reading at all). Mike had to start with about 20 minutes of reading before increasing this length of time over the month.

I don't think Mike ever made it to reading for a whole hour but I've come to realise that isn't the point. The "hour" was arbitrary, it was the taking the time out of our day to read, to prioritise it as something important that was REALLY the purpose of the challenge, and that is something we succeeded in doing.

The real surprise that came out of this challenge was the large effect on the amount of TV we watched over the month. We expected to watch about an hour less television (while we read instead), however the habit of turning off the TV to read, lead us to turn off the TV at other times too!

When we wanted to talk, we would turn the TV off. When we were in the kitchen together, we would turn the TV off; instead of the television being on as background noise we found we would turn it ON to watch a program (usually during dinner), then turn it off again as it was time to read. Although I didn't specifically measure it, I would estimate our TV viewing time was reduced from about 3 hours per night to 1 hour per night (on average).

This was certainly an added bonus to the challenge and we have agreed to continue with reading-time before bed from now on, although the 1-hour time specificity has been dropped.

The Challenge of Chit-chat

When things are hard in life; when dealing with issues of grief, loss or other hardship it can seem extremely difficult to keep up the chit-chat. The constant pleasantries that are part of the social contract, such as "how was your weekend?", "nice weather we're having!" etc.

I've recently been avoiding the lunch-room at busy times because I find the idle chatter about normal lives too tedious when I'm grappling with thoughts of old age, sickness and death, in relation to my ailing father.

A scene in a book I read recently called "The Name of the World" by Denis Johnson, describes one character, Tiberius Soames, who is assumed insane because he has given up on small-talk. When addressed by someone at a party he replies, "my mother died and her corpse was eaten by dogs". (I'm paraphrasing as I don't have the book in front of me).

How wonderful to be able to say exactly what you were thinking! And how obvious that this would appear crazy. The character even refers to the amount of chit-chat required as part of the social contract, and how he had better talk some nonsense for a while to make everyone happy.

I definitely recommend the book to anyone, even though it is off-beat! And although I haven't taken Tiberius' lead in talking quite so openly, I have spent more time this week engaging other people in honest conversation. I found that answering questions honestly (although with some editing) allows other people to drop the facade and engage in honest conversation too, if they want too.

Who knows? Maybe we are all walking around wishing we could talk more honestly with each other? I know I'm guilty of asking some of those tedious questions to other people in order to make small-talk.

What do you think?

"I don't want to be an ant, you know?" Waking Life

January: success! February, let's get started!

You may recall that, inspired by Leo Babauta, Mike and I are doing "one habit changing practice each month", which started with no alcohol for the month of January. For complete honesty, we did not start this challenge until January 4th, however we completed the month PLUS some. 

So to round-up January before moving onto Feb's challenge, drinking no alcohol for the month has gone remarkably well! In fact, I still haven't had an alcoholic drink since I started this challenge.

There was only one day where I felt like having a 'drink' after work so I went and bought myself a bottle of ginger beer (non-alcoholic) as a treat, which was so lovely I didn't have the urge for alcohol after that. One of my friends also tried to push me into breaking the challenge because she wanted a drink and didn't want to drink alone (she did not prevail). 

I definitely think that the challenge went so well because we had mentally prepared ourselves and had been drinking less and less before January anyway. The obstacles I had foreseen were:
1. Friday afternoon drinks at work
2. Pressure from friends and family to drink during certain occasions

I prepared for Friday afternoons at work by putting a reminder in my calendar for each lunch time Friday; this reminded me to go and get something nice to drink for after works 'drinks'. That way I had something nice to look forward to drinking (such as coconut water, lemon lime and bitters) instead of just having water as my only option.

Friends and family were managed in a similar manner - the best way to prepare family and friends that you aren't drinking with them, is to give them advance notice and a reason. As expected, everyone I spoke to took this well (even my mum who was also forced to drink alone on Australia Day!) apart from the one friend mentioned above.

So what's our plan for February? Reading one hour per day. This one sounds easy but we have already missed the opportunity to do this both on February 1st and 2nd, so not the greatest start. However now it is Monday and we will start this habit afresh this evening. I'll let you know how we go!