“laziness is the key to avoiding bad habits”, a funny looking man once said.
I know myself to be one of the laziest people I know. With plenty of bad habits to boot.
I’m one of those people that would just stay home instead of going out, due to sheer laziness. Take weeks to get certain tasks done (mowing the lawn). Being late for or missing lectures back when I was at school, and a host of others things, a list too long to mention.
But I want to change that, and I’m taking steps to do so. Albeit slow steps.
The will to change was triggered mainly by two things: magic and certain events and situations at work.
Things I’ve started to do (or stopped doing):
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Stopped playing poker at lunch. What a great decision. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but given that I started the whole lunch poker thing at work, usually gathered people to play, dealt pretty much every hand and played probably over 85% of the games played in the last two years. You tend to get associated with it. I’m very glad to disassociate myself from that.
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Waking up early and getting to work at 8am. Here’s another big one for me. I had gotten into a state where I was getting late and inconsistent with my waking up patterns (sleeping patterns is a whole different issue). Now I have my alarm set to 6am, and I’ve come to a point where I automatically wake up at 5:45am, then I wait for the alarm to go off.
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Started Jogging. Something I haven’t done regularly since high-school (5 years ago), and that too only during gym class. Ramadan/fasting has but a break to that, I only started the week before Ramadan. I had started jogging 4km each day for about half an hour. I’m definately going to re-start that once fasting is over.
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Squash. Great physical activity, lots of fun. Right now only playing once a week, and it’s only been three weeks. And this was something I didn’t want to but a break to due to Ramadan. I knew that if I stopped playing for a month, I would get too lazy to start again. But once Ramadan is over, I’m going to get a membership to the gym so that I can play more than once a week.
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Stopped doing magic at work. Hmmm… not sure this was a good thing. I haven’t done much magic for over a month (work or otherwise), but I would never consider giving up magic. I love it way too much. Not doing magic for a month has got me fallen into a rut in that regard. I don’t like not doing magic. But more about magic in later blog entries.
Things I want to do:
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Learn the guitar. I know I can’t sing for beans, but the abililty to create something pleasant to the ears is very appealling. I want to be able to play a few Cat Steven songs, the Filefly theme song, and more importantly I want to be able to play the music of my favourite Hindi songs on a guitar (even if the songs don’t use a guitar). If I can do magic, I should be able to learn how to play a guitar. But we’ll see how that goes.
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Learn Spanish. I never thought I’d ever be interested in learning a different language. But why now? and why Spanish of all languages? There is a decent amount of magic literature in Spanish. It’s not just about the “tricks”, it’s about the beauty of magic. I would love to read those books. (I did say magic had a lot to do with my will to change).
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Pick up table tennis again. It’s been over 8 months since I last played with any regularity. I want to get started again.
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Stop talking so much, and listen more. This is a difficult one. But something I’ve started to work on. I don’t say much of meaning for a person who talks so much. What I absolutely hate is when I interrupt others. It’s plain rude. At least I’m aware of it, hopefully I can condition myself to talk less and not speak out of turn.
Not that any of the above really give a point or much meaning to my life. I’m still looking for that, or waiting for it to come.
But either way, here’s to self improvement.