Tag: 2018

2018 Resolution #3

2018 Resolution #3: Get back to exercising

Around spring of this past year I began, as a means of giving myself some easily-achievable goals, a loose program of regular exercise, chiefly in the form of regular walks. Although this simple routine did not give me, to borrow a phrase from the magazines I pass at the checkout counter, “a hot summer bod”, it did get me out of the house at a time where I needed to, and help build my stamina up in order to withstand our summer travel itinerary.

Despite my intentions, I fell out of this new habit after mid-November, and have not managed to get back into it. In my defense, my normal walking route from my house through town lacks sidewalks, and the lawns which I normally walk through are covered in snow. Our house is populated and organized in such a way that even if I possessed proper exercise equipment, there would be no place to put it.

Going to a gym does not strike me as a practical alternative. To put it simply, there is not a gym close by enough to drop by under casual pretenses. This is problematic for two reasons. First, an intense routine on a set schedule that requires a great deal of preparation and investment is more or less contraindicated by my medical situation, which has a distinct tendency to sabotage any such plans.

Secondly, such a routine would clash with the lies that I tell myself. In executing my more casual routine, I have found in motivating myself, it is often necessary, or at least, helpful, to have some mental pretext that does not involve exercise directly. If I can pitch getting out of the house to myself instead as a sightseeing expedition, or as a means of participating in town society by means of my presence, it is much easier to motivate myself without feeling anxious.

Accordingly, my resolution for the coming year is to exercise more later in the year when I can. Admittedly this is a weak goal, with a lot of wiggle room to get out of. And I might be more concerned about that, except that this was basically the same thing that I did last year, and at least that time, it worked.

2018 Resolution #2

2018 Resolution #2: Remove unused clothes

At present, I have an overabundance of clothes. In my case I define overabundance as having reached a point at which some 65% of my clothes have not been worn in six months, and some 35% have not been worn in a year. On the one hand this statistic is slightly misleading, as most of that 35% are clothes have never been properly catalogued and entered into my organizational system in the first place, probably because they were given to me in a large bundle all at once, and I simply never got around to sorting them, because I never found myself wanting for anything from those particular bundles.

Other times it is because The clothes no longer quite fit me comfortably, or I have simply not had occasion to wear them, or that the clothes are not even mine, but merely reside under my jurisdiction because on the day that specific item needed to be stowed away, I had space where others did not. Consequently I have acquired several stacks of clothing and apparel in closets and against walls.

This problem is exacerbated by the nature of our household’s gift economy, which is such that clothes which survive to no longer fit me are given to by brother, who has much the same problem, as he has clothes coming in both from gifts, same as I do, and from me. So in order to clear the backlog in my room, there has to be room in my brother’s room, and so on.

This task does not represent a terribly large physical difficulty, nor a particularly prolonged period of execution that would necessitate a major time commitment. It does however represent a challenge of both logistics and cooperation, in that it requires several parties to work on the same page.

2018 Resolution #1

2018 Resolution #1: Standardize to 24-hour time

A year or so ago, one of my resolutions was to finally iron out the problem of writing dates. For context: I grew up in Australia, where the default is DD/MM/YY. But in the US, where I now live, the default is MM/DD/YY. Now if I had to pick one of the two, I would probably lean towards the former, since it seems slightly more logical, and more natural to me personally. But since everyone around me uses the latter, taking that avenue would only cause more confusion in my life, perhaps not for me, but certainly for those around me.

For a while I would switch between the two systems depending on what purpose I was writing the date for. Items such as school assignments would be dated in the American fashion, while things for my personal consumption would be done in the commonwealth manner. Until after several years I started going throug my own files of schoolwork, particularly artwork, and encountering dates such as 9/10. What does that mean, in the context of a pencil marking in the corner of a sketch, jotted down as an afterthought? Does it mean the tenth of September, or the ninth of October? Or was it completed during the month of September, 2010? Or perhaps it is merely the ninth piece of a series of ten? Or perhaps it received a score of 90% that I wanted to record for posterity.

I knew that the dualistic system was untenable, but I also knew that I would likely fail in the mental self-discipline necessary in forcing myself into either of the two competing standards; especially given that there remain certain contexts where it is necessary that I use each. I therefore decided to adopt a whole new system, based on ISO 8601.

Henceforth, where I was given the choice, I would record all dates in YYYY-MM-DD format. This would make it abundantly obvious that I was recording the date, and the format I was using. It was also different enough that I would not confuse it. Where compelled by outside forces, such as stringent academic standards for school assignments, I would continue to use the other formats, but there it would be clear which format I was using.

Despite skepticism from those around me, this system has worked out quite well, and so I am expanding the project to include having time displayed on my devices in 24-hour time.