The Habit of Being Who You Are

[darkemeralds]

Two or three times a week, I make the short pilgrimage to this place:



then turn around and go back across the street to this place:



and today it struck me that the number of times I'll be doing so in the future, though it has always been finite, is now really finite.


(Retirement countdown)

In 169 days, the nice people at Seattle's Best Coffee who know my name, my cup, and my two favorite drink orders, won't be part of my daily life anymore. On the plus side, I won't have to enter the portals of the World's Tallest Basement anymore either.

I'm reading a book called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself which, while sadly full of pseudo-science, does contain one interesting idea: that a lot of what we are is habit, and that conscious application of mind can change habit, with the implication that we can change who we are.

It's not that I want to be someone different, particularly (mostly I'm reading the book on my sister's recommendation), but a whole bunch of my habits are shortly going to be changing considerably, with or without the conscious application of my consciousness, and I still don't have a clue what I'd like to replace them with.

Comments

[bluemeridian]

Particularly amusing as I have a habit suddenly in need of changing. In my case it'll be at least partially replaced with "read more fic", but my habit is of significantly less importance (and time investment) than yours!

[darkemeralds]

Read more fic seems like an excellent strategy! A great, enticing replacement for some other habit. Good luck!

[ravurian]

I think I read somewhere that it generally takes 28 days for any new practice to settle into habit, but at least three cycles of the 28 days before it becomes embedded. This explains why I've not updated my journal in a week...

[darkemeralds]

Oh hello! Notifications from DW don't seem to be coming through on my gmail account...and *checks* I think I've figured out why. Hm...

Anyway, 3 x 28 days to embed the habit of being retired. I guess I'd better make some plans for those first 84 days so that I don't just fall into some unbreakable habit of getting up at 11:00 and not brushing my teeth till 2:00 p.m.

[tehomet]

Habit really is a force. Slightly alarming realisation!

[darkemeralds]

Since writing this post, I've done some further reading, and there's a concept out there (way out there) that rather than universal "laws" there are habits. Fairly basic things like crystallization of chemical compounds, and the gravitational constants, may be more "what the universe got used to" than "immutable laws."

Kinda bends the mind, doesn't it?

[tehomet]

Crikey, it does.