Making A Habit
If you've read any of my blogs in the past, a fair few of them were dissections of various miseries. This was cathartic and the introspection was useful, but in the spirit of a new venture, let's kick off with looking at how I've made myself happier. There's a one-line, TLDR, summary at the end for those who don't want to wade through this on a Friday night.
Anyway.
Let's get into it...
When I reflect on 2018, two things are clear to me:
1) I'm very proud of the work I produced that year.
2) I never ever want to have a year like that ever again.
Number two was actually pretty clear to me by mid-way through the year. For the sake of this post, I looked at my work schedule fro last April and hoo boy. What a disaster zone. Acute memories of alarms set for 3.10AM in order to hit 9AM deadlines and other horror stories. How had I convinced myself that this was in anyway sustainable for me, a person who can't handle many projects at a time, let alone switching rapidly between them? Some of it was bad timing, most of it was bad expectation and time management on my part.
In the end, I pulled it off but it cost me a hell of a lot in terms of emotional and physical health and I told myself that I wouldn't keep doing this. I don't love writing enough for this to keep happening.
Except.
I'd been saying that for years hadn't I?
Looking back at old journal entries made it frustratingly clear that I was very good at identifying problems and very bad at doing anything about them. There were half-hearted (though well-intentioned) attempts to sort this across the years but there I was over a decade later, having not escape my terrible patterns of behaviour. The sheer fatalism that puts in you is crippling. It spreads to everything. You will never get better at anything. You will always be just squeaking over the line, exhausted and having stripped all joy and affection from your life. This is you forever and you will never fix it.
Well, guess what? I think I've managed it. Not fully, there's still work to be done but I am undeniably more productive, cheerier in general and healthier (also in general - let's ignore the fact I had crisps for breakfast). I'm about five months into this attempted fixing so feel safe to try and talk about it. There turned out to be no magic solution, I suppose I was just in a place where I was so f*cking exhausted that I was ready to make a proper, concerted effort to remedy an issue that has basically been with me since I was a kid.
That effort started with me being honest about all the bad habits that affected me physically that I'd sort of brushed off as little things but were cumulatively hurting me quite badly. So on a really basic level, I'm eating better, sleeping more (forcing myself to at least get into bed before midnight), drinking less and doing some exercise every day. I track all of this on an app, which has been great for recognising patterns but also usefully gamifying habits. All of this combined has made me feel so much embarrassingly better I feel like a proper dickhead for not doing it before.
Next, moving beyond the physical, I've tried to calm my anxious/guilty mind down. I've started meditating for ten minutes in the morning. I've turned down lots of work. I've made myself read a bloody book for at least half an hour every day. I went from not having read a non-work related book in five years to reading twenty so far. How did I ever let that joy of reading slip? It's what sent me on this journey in the first place.
Finally, in terms of work habits, I experimented and experimented until I found a system that suits me - 90 minute bursts with an hour long breaks in between in which I am allowed to do anything I want that isn't work. Go for a walk. Cook a meal. Write a letter to a friend. At first I felt bad about those long breaks but really it's meant I've started to do all the stuff I used to claim I had no time for (my grandma has noticed the uptick in calls...) and makes the hours I actually work for more efficient. I do those stints with a writing buddy and we check in with each other at the end of every 'shift' about how it went for us (I think that bit is really crucial - evaluating on the fly). If I do at least three 90 minute session, I let myself off the hook for the rest of the day. I usually do four. If I do a couple and take some meetings, that's ok too. One day off a week (usually Saturday).
The idea of implementing a proper routine scared me at first because I wanted to be able to be a flexible person. That's what being an artist is, right? Really though, it's the bedding in of this routine that has let me feel ok with bending it occasionally. This has sent me from "not feeling awful" to being...well...quite satisfied with my life for the first time in ages. Ever maybe?
There are caveats to this of course, which speak to why I probably never managed it before: Earning more money has helped. Having enough reputation to delay projects helps. Experience in the processes of writing for different mediums helps. Being a certain age helps.
But things feel good and I'm grateful for it. On we go.
The TLDR: Vinay Discovered That Habit Is Care.
PS. I've got a short list of topics I'm planning to touch on eventually, but if you've got something specific you'd like me to consider, lemme know. I won't go into specifics about any shows I've worked on (unless I decide it's relevant), but anything else is fair game.
PPS. I promise everything you get from me via this subscription will be 1000 words or under. Mostly way under.
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to patelograms: