6 October 2004
52 days.
52 days since I last had an internet connection at home.
52 days since I moved the main bulk of my stuff out of the flat in which I'd lived for 310 days, with someone who I'd spent the majority of the previous 2,914 days of my life with.
I read somewhere, once, that it takes 8 weeks to form a habit, and by extension, 8 weeks to break one.
8 weeks.
56 days.
4 days short of a new habit, or possibly, the loss of an old one.
I'm not so convinced about this habit thing.
I mean, there are different levels of habits. There are the little things, like folding empty food wrappers lengthways into a ribbon, and then knotting it, or always putting the toilet paper roll on the holder with the sheet hanging forwards. Surely these little things take less time to change than the big stuff?
2,914 days is 56 times 52.
That's a lot of habit forming time, but not nearly as long as the 10,263 days I've been alive for, so far.
The origin of certain habits has occupied my thoughts, to a greater or lesser degree, for quite a while now.
Some of them have been easier to identify than others.
Simple cause and effect.
This equals that.
I tap the top of drinks cans before opening them because someone once told me that if you tapped the top before popping the tab it wouldn't explode all over you. It seemed to work, so I kept doing it. Logically, I know it's nonsense, and that if I'd shaken a can, tapping the top of it wouldn't stop it from emptying its contents all over me (and, doubtless, everyone around me).
Other stuff isn't so easy to pin down, and that's the stuff I most want to figure out.
I have a burning need to understand myself.
I need to know why I do what I do, so that I can decide which habits I want to keep, change, break or make.
Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
I want a different result.
Despite your uncertainty, your maths would get an A+ in my class. Keep smiling (and taking pics please)
Which came first, my habits or my personality? Is it a chicken and egg thing, only more inseparably complex and less of a taste sensation . . . depending on your habits, of course?
The last time I didn't tap the bottom of a beer can before opening it, I sprayed the entire vestibule area of a crowded commuter train with sticky Grolsch foam. If this had happened in a dream, the inescapable symbolism would have inevitably failed to help me grasp the point. However, as it happened in an awake(-ish) state, I just resumed my happy can-tapping habits. Though I do now point my beer towards the (open) train window while opening it, just in case.
So which bit of self-understanding chooses which habits to break? As it’s impossible to be objective, I favour breaking them all. Or tossing a coin on it. Or starting a pattern of breaking one habit a day until it becomes a habit that gets broken. Habits are an inescapable consequence of being alive, but classifying them as good or bad is problematic. Breathing, for instance, is in most cases a good habit. There are however, a very few people I’d rather weren’t doing it so much. And then there’s the disturbing mental images of naked nuns I’m now suffering . . . Bad jokes aside, even Einstein’s theories can demonstrate that the making of apparently negligible change can produce surprising, significant and often the most informative results. Cause and effect only ever seems simple to me with the wisdom of hindsight, or if I’m lucky, the appreciation of a fun effect or two at the time.
Oh my, I'm rambling in the middle of the night again. I guess it’s just a habit of mine.
My clarinett teacher used to say that habits are always bad as they stop you from moving on and improving. There may be something to it.I think he didn't class breathing as a habit, more a reflex, hence the validity of his generalisation.
Yay. You guessed it. Welcome to the club.
"Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
Yup, you got it. We are ALL insane. It's only the people in the loony bin that are normal.
Oh Pixel, we don't know each other, but I'm so moved by your post. It all sounds utterly painful. I'm so sorry.
I have had the same thought myself.
Check my thoughts here.
Ps. You will be glad to know that I haven't yet developed the superpowers.
... the online home and (not very) alter(ed)-ego of Ann McMeekin, a recently freelance Web Accessibility Consultant.
... passionate about many things, most of which will turn up on this site at some time or other.
... contactable via email.
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