Life Reboot (Totally Stolen From Wil Wheaton.)
Lately I've been spending a lot of my free time reading Wil Wheaton's blog at wilwheaton.net, as a big fan of Wil Wheaton from watching Star Trek The Next Generation and more recently his gaming shenanigans with the Geek and Sundry shows TableTop and Titansgrave and everything in between, I can highly recommend his blog.
Reading it has inspired me to really get into what I set out to do several years ago and start writing a regular blog of my own. When I realised it had been nearly two years since I'd actually written anything for Never Playing it Cool, I decided last week now was the time to pick it back up and commit to regular posts and entries. I also realised it was among a lot of things I wanted to do or change in my life and again this was really inspired by something Ser Wheaton has been posting on his own blog. He had started a "Life Reboot" where he looked at his life and addressed what needed changing or what he wanted to do more/less of or what he didn't already do but wanted to start. You can read all about what he set out to do here Seven Things I Did to Reboot My Life.
He listed seven things that he was going to do to make his life better/happier/healthier etc etc... he then regularly posts how he's doing and gives each item on his checklist a grade.
So I'm totally stealing this idea. I'm not going to do it exactly as he is but I am starting by making a list of things I want to do for my own Life Reboot.
I may add to these over time but for now this is what I'm going with, and I suppose this is now where I go down the list and write a little bit about each item on it.
Read More
I love reading, it is one of my favourite hobbies. In my younger days I would spend a day, from the moment I woke up through to when I'd go to sleep, solidly reading (pausing of course for the obligatory things that are unavoidable as the day passes.) As I've gotten older I've found I don't make the time to read and find I am now more of a book collector than a reader. Even when I worked in a book shop I didn't read as much as I wanted and do so even less now that I have left the bookseller profession. I still buy books on a regular basis and have an ever growing collection and at the time I was working as a bookseller I would say I was buying ten for everyone I read. That ratio is probably now twenty for every one read. I now have this personal library of books that are doing no more than looking pretty and gathering dust. So now I want to start working through my collection at a much faster rate than I am. I'm not going to set a target, like so many words or chapters a day, I just want to ensure I am reading at every opportunity I have.
Write More
My love of reading sparked a love of writing. I'm awful at it. But as with many creative things I do, I do it mainly for my own enjoyment and if someone else likes it that is pure bonus. Mr Wheaton has a fantastic way of putting it - "making something where there wasn't something before" which really sums up how how I feel about creative hobbies and is what I think I enjoy most about writing and recording music. Before I hit record that song didn't exist, now it does, how awesome is that?
I've attempted many times to write a "novel" but I guess my method and approach is all wrong and I never have any real plan, which is why I think I've never managed to finish anything. I started writing Star Trek fan fiction based around the characters I created in Star Trek Online and even uploaded the first instalment to a fan fic site with the promise of continuations which never came to be. So I'm setting out to write more, and I think the easiest way to keep up with that is to make the blogging a regular thing and work on fiction when the time and inspiration is there. I also hope that regular blogging will help with my writing skills and that through regular writing I'll work towards creating better fiction.
Be Healthier (Mentally and Physically)
Lately I've been looking at myself and realising how unhealthy and unfit I am, especially since I started a job where I sit at a desk all day, to then come home and sit at a desk or on a sofa all evening. I've gone up two waist sizes in less than a year. My body aches a lot of the time and I have no energy or stamina when I doing any kind of physical activity. It makes gigging with the band very hard.
On top of that, as someone who has issues with depression and anxiety, my poor self image can trigger some real lows.
I managed to have a real handle on the whole depression thing but lately it keeps cropping up its ugly head saying "hey remember me?" This I think is my main reason for this whole reboot thing, the problem with depression is it sucks the joy out of the things you love and tells you that you don't have the energy for it. When it hits it hardest, a simple pleasure such as reading a book becomes hard work and too much of an effort. When I try to read I don't take anything in and I'm just unable to enjoy the story. And it's not just reading it sucks the joy out of, apply that same lethargy and disinterest to anything I would normally enjoy and gain real satisfaction from and the depression will remove it all. Having said that, the depression is nowhere near as bad as it once was and only appears at odd times for unpredictable periods. The anxiety however...
I have a uncontrollable need to please people. I fear falling out with people that in reality I care very little about but that part of the brain that I have no control over tells me I do. For example; in my current line of work I have to call people for quotes to get the best price for a service we require. I'll ring one guy and get a price, then go to another guy and get a price and then pick the best one. I HATE having to call the guy back that lost out, the anxiety tells me that it's going to be uncomfortable and he's going to get angry with me for wasting his time and that rapport I've built up with a faceless person in a different city will be destroyed and he'll hate me forever. Despite doing this daily and getting nothing more than an "okay, no worries" each time, my badly wired brain continues to tell me yeah it was fine then, but what if you catch him in bad mood today.
I have to try and stop thinking this way and stop trying to keep everyone happy and realise if someones going to fall out with me for telling them some bad news then maybe I don't really want that person in my life. Or realise that person isn't a friend, they're a colleague or a sales person who's feelings I couldn't give a fuck about.
Another key trigger for the whole depression/anxiety thing is time. I get so angry at myself if I don't feel I've made good use of my time. I've never been a morning person and really struggle to get myself out of bed, but when I allow myself that extra 10 minutes or half hour I end up getting wrapped up in how much time I wasted, that could have been used for better things. I get so frustrated if I don't spend every waking moment doing the things I want to get done, be it work on a project or playing a video game. That badly wired part of my brain just insists on telling me that that thing must be done now as there'll not be another time. That anxiety triggers the depression, and the depression kills any drive I have to do anything, then I don't get anything done, and then I stress that I've not made best use of my time, and that trigger the depression... you see where this is going.
The worst thing about the depression is it disguises itself well and you don't realise what that lack of energy and constant tiredness really is, and at the moment I am always so tired.
I could write about this for a long time but I've already written a considerable amount so I'll stop here. Maybe I'll talk about it again in another blog when I feel comfortable sharing this again.
I think the main thing I need to focus on to tackle this is fight through the lethargy, get myself physically healthy and fitter and find ways to better manage my time, which brings us nicely to the next thing on the list.
Be More Organised
In many ways I am a very organised person, I like a place for everything and everything in it's place. My books, DVDs, CDs etc are all alphabetised and in some cases even categorised. However, in many other ways I am not an organised person. There are many things that can trigger the lows I described earlier and one of them is clutter and mess. The ironic thing is I am the main cause of the clutter and mess around me, because that same badly wired part of my brain tells me that the 5 minutes it would take to wash the dishes as soon as I've finished a meal is time better spent on the "more important things." Then when the work builds up and it then becomes an hour's a worth of cleaning... yeah.
I think it's all about better managing my time so I can balance the things I want to do against the things I have to do to make the environment around me somewhere that is conducive to achieve the mental state I desire.
I think better managing my time will help achieve better sleep patterns, as well as help keep on top of the physically healthy lifestyle I'm trying to achieve.
Keeping my surroundings neat and organised, doing the little things now rather than putting them off so they become big things and ignoring that part of my brain that tells me it's not worth my time, will be the main key to achieving the goals of this whole reboot thing.
Watch Less TV
I waste far too much time sitting in front of the television, when there's something on that I specifically want to watch that's fine. However most days I put the TV on for the sake of it and waste my life away flicking through channels of things I don't really even want to watch. This is a waste of my time (see above feelings on best use of my time) and is going to stop.
This is the time I should be using to read the books I want to read, and play the games I want to play, and get the exercise I need, and generally do the things that I need to do to make me happier and healthier. Again it comes back to that lethargy and exhaustion that comes from a poor state of mental health. It convinces you that you don't have the energy to do those things you want to do, and all you can do is sit and do nothing. At the moment this isn't proving to be too much of an issue and if I choose to pull myself away from in front of the TV to do something else, I can. But there are days when doing so is a real effort.
Play More Games
I nearly didn't add this to my list because in all honesty playing games takes very little effort and I do it regularly anyway. However like my collection of books I have a lot of unplayed board games and video games. I realised when I play games either on my own or with friends on one of our games nights, the same games get played and others get ignored. Thanks to Steam the collection of games on my gaming PC is obscene and I have far more unplayed than I do played. When I complete a game (and I am a completionist, so all these unplayed games really nags at me) rather than just start a game I already have I browse Steam again to see if there's something else I'd rather play than one of the multitude of icons on my desktop.
So it's not so much about playing games more regularly, but more a case of working through all those games I've yet to play.
I could go into so much more detail and depth on the items in my list but for now I've outlined the main motivations for the goals I've set. I'm hoping that sharing it like this will help me stick to it all, as I intend to publish regular updates as to how I'm getting on.
You never know, we may see progress.
(Disclaimer: I realise throughout this I have spoken of my depression and anxiety and because I'm very bad at writing it may give the impression that I am a miserable wreck. This isn't the case. There was a time when it was all very overwhelming, crippling you could say, but now I have a good handle on it but it's one of those things that I'll always be living with and will affect me on a day to day basis in one form or another. But generally I am in a good place and what I've spoken about above is just dealing with those little background things that can raise my stress levels and prevent me from being as productive as I'd like.)
Reading it has inspired me to really get into what I set out to do several years ago and start writing a regular blog of my own. When I realised it had been nearly two years since I'd actually written anything for Never Playing it Cool, I decided last week now was the time to pick it back up and commit to regular posts and entries. I also realised it was among a lot of things I wanted to do or change in my life and again this was really inspired by something Ser Wheaton has been posting on his own blog. He had started a "Life Reboot" where he looked at his life and addressed what needed changing or what he wanted to do more/less of or what he didn't already do but wanted to start. You can read all about what he set out to do here Seven Things I Did to Reboot My Life.
He listed seven things that he was going to do to make his life better/happier/healthier etc etc... he then regularly posts how he's doing and gives each item on his checklist a grade.
So I'm totally stealing this idea. I'm not going to do it exactly as he is but I am starting by making a list of things I want to do for my own Life Reboot.
- Read More
- Write More
- Commit to regular blogs with both Never Playing it Cool and The Player of Games
- Work more on my story writing
- Be Healthier (Mentally and Physically)
- Eat Better Food
- Exercise More
- Get Better Sleep
- Stress Less
- Be More Organised
- Watch Less TV
- Play More Games
I may add to these over time but for now this is what I'm going with, and I suppose this is now where I go down the list and write a little bit about each item on it.
Read More
I love reading, it is one of my favourite hobbies. In my younger days I would spend a day, from the moment I woke up through to when I'd go to sleep, solidly reading (pausing of course for the obligatory things that are unavoidable as the day passes.) As I've gotten older I've found I don't make the time to read and find I am now more of a book collector than a reader. Even when I worked in a book shop I didn't read as much as I wanted and do so even less now that I have left the bookseller profession. I still buy books on a regular basis and have an ever growing collection and at the time I was working as a bookseller I would say I was buying ten for everyone I read. That ratio is probably now twenty for every one read. I now have this personal library of books that are doing no more than looking pretty and gathering dust. So now I want to start working through my collection at a much faster rate than I am. I'm not going to set a target, like so many words or chapters a day, I just want to ensure I am reading at every opportunity I have.
Write More
My love of reading sparked a love of writing. I'm awful at it. But as with many creative things I do, I do it mainly for my own enjoyment and if someone else likes it that is pure bonus. Mr Wheaton has a fantastic way of putting it - "making something where there wasn't something before" which really sums up how how I feel about creative hobbies and is what I think I enjoy most about writing and recording music. Before I hit record that song didn't exist, now it does, how awesome is that?
I've attempted many times to write a "novel" but I guess my method and approach is all wrong and I never have any real plan, which is why I think I've never managed to finish anything. I started writing Star Trek fan fiction based around the characters I created in Star Trek Online and even uploaded the first instalment to a fan fic site with the promise of continuations which never came to be. So I'm setting out to write more, and I think the easiest way to keep up with that is to make the blogging a regular thing and work on fiction when the time and inspiration is there. I also hope that regular blogging will help with my writing skills and that through regular writing I'll work towards creating better fiction.
Be Healthier (Mentally and Physically)
Lately I've been looking at myself and realising how unhealthy and unfit I am, especially since I started a job where I sit at a desk all day, to then come home and sit at a desk or on a sofa all evening. I've gone up two waist sizes in less than a year. My body aches a lot of the time and I have no energy or stamina when I doing any kind of physical activity. It makes gigging with the band very hard.
On top of that, as someone who has issues with depression and anxiety, my poor self image can trigger some real lows.
I managed to have a real handle on the whole depression thing but lately it keeps cropping up its ugly head saying "hey remember me?" This I think is my main reason for this whole reboot thing, the problem with depression is it sucks the joy out of the things you love and tells you that you don't have the energy for it. When it hits it hardest, a simple pleasure such as reading a book becomes hard work and too much of an effort. When I try to read I don't take anything in and I'm just unable to enjoy the story. And it's not just reading it sucks the joy out of, apply that same lethargy and disinterest to anything I would normally enjoy and gain real satisfaction from and the depression will remove it all. Having said that, the depression is nowhere near as bad as it once was and only appears at odd times for unpredictable periods. The anxiety however...
I have a uncontrollable need to please people. I fear falling out with people that in reality I care very little about but that part of the brain that I have no control over tells me I do. For example; in my current line of work I have to call people for quotes to get the best price for a service we require. I'll ring one guy and get a price, then go to another guy and get a price and then pick the best one. I HATE having to call the guy back that lost out, the anxiety tells me that it's going to be uncomfortable and he's going to get angry with me for wasting his time and that rapport I've built up with a faceless person in a different city will be destroyed and he'll hate me forever. Despite doing this daily and getting nothing more than an "okay, no worries" each time, my badly wired brain continues to tell me yeah it was fine then, but what if you catch him in bad mood today.
I have to try and stop thinking this way and stop trying to keep everyone happy and realise if someones going to fall out with me for telling them some bad news then maybe I don't really want that person in my life. Or realise that person isn't a friend, they're a colleague or a sales person who's feelings I couldn't give a fuck about.
Another key trigger for the whole depression/anxiety thing is time. I get so angry at myself if I don't feel I've made good use of my time. I've never been a morning person and really struggle to get myself out of bed, but when I allow myself that extra 10 minutes or half hour I end up getting wrapped up in how much time I wasted, that could have been used for better things. I get so frustrated if I don't spend every waking moment doing the things I want to get done, be it work on a project or playing a video game. That badly wired part of my brain just insists on telling me that that thing must be done now as there'll not be another time. That anxiety triggers the depression, and the depression kills any drive I have to do anything, then I don't get anything done, and then I stress that I've not made best use of my time, and that trigger the depression... you see where this is going.
The worst thing about the depression is it disguises itself well and you don't realise what that lack of energy and constant tiredness really is, and at the moment I am always so tired.
I could write about this for a long time but I've already written a considerable amount so I'll stop here. Maybe I'll talk about it again in another blog when I feel comfortable sharing this again.
I think the main thing I need to focus on to tackle this is fight through the lethargy, get myself physically healthy and fitter and find ways to better manage my time, which brings us nicely to the next thing on the list.
Be More Organised
In many ways I am a very organised person, I like a place for everything and everything in it's place. My books, DVDs, CDs etc are all alphabetised and in some cases even categorised. However, in many other ways I am not an organised person. There are many things that can trigger the lows I described earlier and one of them is clutter and mess. The ironic thing is I am the main cause of the clutter and mess around me, because that same badly wired part of my brain tells me that the 5 minutes it would take to wash the dishes as soon as I've finished a meal is time better spent on the "more important things." Then when the work builds up and it then becomes an hour's a worth of cleaning... yeah.
I think it's all about better managing my time so I can balance the things I want to do against the things I have to do to make the environment around me somewhere that is conducive to achieve the mental state I desire.
I think better managing my time will help achieve better sleep patterns, as well as help keep on top of the physically healthy lifestyle I'm trying to achieve.
Keeping my surroundings neat and organised, doing the little things now rather than putting them off so they become big things and ignoring that part of my brain that tells me it's not worth my time, will be the main key to achieving the goals of this whole reboot thing.
Watch Less TV
I waste far too much time sitting in front of the television, when there's something on that I specifically want to watch that's fine. However most days I put the TV on for the sake of it and waste my life away flicking through channels of things I don't really even want to watch. This is a waste of my time (see above feelings on best use of my time) and is going to stop.
This is the time I should be using to read the books I want to read, and play the games I want to play, and get the exercise I need, and generally do the things that I need to do to make me happier and healthier. Again it comes back to that lethargy and exhaustion that comes from a poor state of mental health. It convinces you that you don't have the energy to do those things you want to do, and all you can do is sit and do nothing. At the moment this isn't proving to be too much of an issue and if I choose to pull myself away from in front of the TV to do something else, I can. But there are days when doing so is a real effort.
Play More Games
I nearly didn't add this to my list because in all honesty playing games takes very little effort and I do it regularly anyway. However like my collection of books I have a lot of unplayed board games and video games. I realised when I play games either on my own or with friends on one of our games nights, the same games get played and others get ignored. Thanks to Steam the collection of games on my gaming PC is obscene and I have far more unplayed than I do played. When I complete a game (and I am a completionist, so all these unplayed games really nags at me) rather than just start a game I already have I browse Steam again to see if there's something else I'd rather play than one of the multitude of icons on my desktop.
So it's not so much about playing games more regularly, but more a case of working through all those games I've yet to play.
 |
| Yeah, I've probably played about 5 of those... |
I could go into so much more detail and depth on the items in my list but for now I've outlined the main motivations for the goals I've set. I'm hoping that sharing it like this will help me stick to it all, as I intend to publish regular updates as to how I'm getting on.
You never know, we may see progress.
(Disclaimer: I realise throughout this I have spoken of my depression and anxiety and because I'm very bad at writing it may give the impression that I am a miserable wreck. This isn't the case. There was a time when it was all very overwhelming, crippling you could say, but now I have a good handle on it but it's one of those things that I'll always be living with and will affect me on a day to day basis in one form or another. But generally I am in a good place and what I've spoken about above is just dealing with those little background things that can raise my stress levels and prevent me from being as productive as I'd like.)
Comments
Post a Comment