Refraining and Abstaining: A New Order for the Year

“One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.” - Sidney Howard

It finally looks like a more common winter scene that I’m familiar with, and I’m grateful for it. There’s at least 15 centimetres of new snow that arrived since the night before last. I can finally get set to go skiing soon, and it may also help stave off the conditions for drought for next summer as well as my physical sloth during this season.

But rather than looking that far ahead, I sit here doing some review of my recent past to see what to implement for this year in terms of what could be done as measures for betterment. I’ve been so tuned into what prospects I want to invite to do such things as personal resolutions, that I often fail to account for what I should or must give up to gain them. I don’t really view myself as a person loaded with any huge quantity or frequency of bad habits that I need to drop entirely or immediately, or life-crushing deficits that I at least must correct temporarily. It’s not like I’m a person fraught with things as extreme as addictions. However, after doing some introspection after writing my first two entries of this new year, I see that there is plenty of room for improvement; for proactive efforts for better self-care. I thought I would now try things from the opposite end of the spectrum and deploy a more stoic and spartan approach through some successive eliminations of things, even if they may just be temporary.

I noted that the simple word “enough” was one thing that I was going to be mindful about. The questions to follow naturally came as: “What things do I have enough of?" (as in a adequate/great abundance of), and then contrasting that with what is really lacking around here for me, and the question “What things have I had enough of?" (as in setbacks, annoyances, and inconveniences), and gauging that along side with any potential I have to change with any material or behavioural substitutions. I also noted how tired and de-energized I’ve been since the year started. Not a good place to start off from when the general mission is to be somehow happier. A lot of that is mostly due to interference from environmental and health related issues for sure. So, it would probably do me good to make some more conscious efforts to detox in some ways. I need to organize and handle stuff like this in a rigidly hard-core and structured way.

Thus, I compiled a list of things that I’m going to actively challenge myself with abstaining from throughout the course of the year. I won’t be doing them all at the same time, just periodically for a month at a time: some at specially and specifically selected months (as with during this month of January); others at placements I randomly picked for along the course of the year. There are thus twelve such things on my list as personal prohibition trials, each will be approached and committed to with a month-long duration of refrainment. It's kind of like the same exploration/learning model I used last year for my language learning modules.

Prohibition, self-denial, acts of nonparticipation, interludes of deprivations, and measures of austerity are not the only things happening though. I’ll also be including alternate substitute material and behavioural practices in lieu of the other junk to hopefully serve as stuff to fill those voids with positive reinforcements and some manner of redemption. Maybe I'll actually glean some good habits out of this process. I will do my best to record the progress, and to see if there are any actual beneficial changes throughout. At the very least, I'll try and find some humour in it all, even when the challenges get hard and demanding.

The first round of these twelve trials will be finishing soon. I'll try to get it posted soon after month's end.

Bibliography and Resource Material:  The Big Book of 30-Day Challenges, by Rosanna Casper (2017)