A Full 360

I’ve been up since 4:00 AM . . .  again, like five hours before sunrise. Doing upgrades and fixes to my laptop was is the only activity I could think of doing that seemed half-assed productive, and yet not loud enough to disturb any of my neighbours at this hour. While waiting for the scans and optimizations to finish, I’m filling the gap of the period used to all this with some writing to clear my head as well. My phases of insomnia have been getting progressively worse now for the past few weeks. There’s still another month yet to pass after the recent solstice until maybe things normalize themselves with the wonky sleep issues as the extra darkness recedes after then. Being exposed to fumes, dust, and debris containing noxious chemical compounds in both fresh and old deteriorating forms of adhesives (NOT WILLINGLY!) from the past three days probably hasn’t been doing me any good physically or mentally either. I’ve came home from work feeling a bit sickly and even more de-energized, and I have been falling into a cycle of collapsing on my chesterfield napping, and ruining the phases and timing of more appropriate sleep hygiene. The closest geographical place right now that suits my phases of wakefulness of normal diurnal activity where I won’t be disturbed by jet lag is probably Iceland. Also, for some reason as of late, unknown to even me, I’ve been gazing up skyward to note the positions of planets and constellations as well when I walk the dog in the early morning and mid-evening. Perhaps, it’s something that’s becoming instinctual:  to tune into and immerse myself deeper into nature’s flow of rhythms and cycles, in the middle of a winter season which never seems to budge from either coldness or lack of daylight around here. In any case, a more intensified consciousness of timelines indeed occupies my mind around this part of the year. I tend to think and process time in shapes along with numbers: another weird way my brain works.

The first five days of this year involve my usual messing about with planning and scheduling for the whole calendar year ahead, which inadvertently leads to me playing around with the trivialities of time equations*. January 6^th isn’t just where Christmas eve falls on the Julian/Orthodox Christian calendar, or Epiphany on the Gregorian calendar; it is also Day 1 of the remaining 360 days left of this year, signifying in a sense the first degree of a full circle. I’d like to suggest that making New Year’s resolutions just prior to, or after, New Year’s Day is really an exercise in futility. One should never use just a couple spontaneous (usually guilt-spurred) moments to make a full commitment that’s supposed to take you the rest of the year or beyond to achieve. I’d say avoid that impulsivity, and plan for something within the first five days (not just five minutes, or something blurted out in five seconds) of the New Year, doing such things as:

·         Setting a timeline for steps

·         Writing the goals down (I won’t be doing that here though, it’s too personal)***

·         Prioritizing the things that are important

·         Reviewing what resources and materials you have, and what you still need

·         Looking through an actual calendar to establish dates for milestones for setting reasonable goals

·         Setting a budget for this stuff

Today is the first degree of a small step on a journey of coming to full circle. Check your progress throughout. Be a real geek about it. Check the first 15 degrees of this special circle (on date January 20^th), check on Pi (π) day, a day devoted to circles (March 14, 2018), check on the first full quadrant (April 5^th), check on your birthday after this point**, check the midway point from here to year’s end (July 4^th), and three quarters of the way through (Oct 2^nd). Take time to cull out whatever isn’t working and replace it with something that does along the way.

But, what do I know . . . typing stuff like this on an insomnia-addled and chemical-fogged brain doesn’t necessarily qualify as sage advice for myself and others for movements toward betterment for the year ahead, but it’s better than no real plan of movement at all, which 95% of the time is wasted efforts by people who use impulsive and rash resolution making on New Year’s Eve or Day.

So, Happy Epiphany, and Merry Christmas to the orthodox celebrants. Do realize that three hundred and sixty days is a quicker cycle than one usually expects, try to do the best with it.

Addendum: My friend introduced me to an app that is very fitting for this endeavor: HabitBull. I'll give it an exploration and test through.

*-Like the statistical frequency or rate of goal scoring needed for how one team to tie or surpass another in some IIHF Word Junior hockey games, for example.

**- January 6^th is special to me because it is exactly a full 9 months from here until my birthday (an entire human gestation period). Thus, I would guess being conceived on Epiphany (derived from the Greek, meaning “manifestation”) is as significant as an extra holy day for me, as being born on Christmas day is for my Dad.

***- The one thing that I will note here that was a success from last year’s go around was learning some elements of other languages, with better fluency than I thought I’d have.