Dateline 1-26-2017

It's always interesting to discover a new subtle thing about yourself especially later in life. As someone who has been single my entire life, I've spent a lot of time getting to know myself so I'm always surprised when I find something new. 

I'm not talking big time revelations like being allergic to something that I've effortlessly avoided my entire life, or a part of the solution to a mental hang-up that I've blacked out the source, no, I'm talking extremely subtle realizations that get me zero steps further in big picture life.

For the past week, I've been taking my dog out for end of day's walks. Not only does she love it but I get to feed my Fitbit the finishing steps to close out my day. At first I really liked this, romanticizing an end of day process with a boy and his dog venturing out to enjoy nature with a lovely view of the stars.

It didn't take long before I realized that I hated having this task hanging over my head. The fantasy I was trying to build of enjoying this activity came crashing down when I barely missed my daily goal. It was 11:55 in the PM and I was 500 steps away from my 10,000 step goal. I just finished to walk with the dog and was about to know out these last steps by storming back and forth across my room, only to have the battery give out 138 steps shy of success.

This bothered me so much, not because I missed my steps but because my Fitbit app now has it noted that I didn't make my day when I definitely did. To make sure this never happens again, I decided to fit in 75% of my steps before I officially start my day. This allowed me to meet my mark by the midpoint of my day and made the evening walk more enjoyable minus the obligatory vibe of finishing a task.

I noticed similar results when I tried to switch my writing time for this daily post to the end of the day. Though I love writing in the middle of the night, it's only enjoyable when it's an optional task. Making my favorite time to write a mandatory daily deadline quickly ruined the fun.

From here on out, I am going to try to get as much of my obligations done as early as possible to free up my evenings for enjoyable tasks that may even include getting ahead of the game. Now I need to continue to stockpile more Saturday Night Live reviews to keep that from being nothing more than last minute reviews.

Talk to you later when I chime in with my latest review.

Cheers,

The Wicker Breaker