![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_3\/2758_concert_tickets.jpg\")
\nStill energized after my vacation, I’m making a new effort to get my energy levels up and improve my mental health. The quarantine years messed me up, and the end of quarantine didn’t magically fix things.<\/p>\n
\nStill energized after my vacation, I’m making a new effort to get my energy levels up and improve my mental health. The quarantine years messed me up, and the end of quarantine didn’t magically fix things.<\/p>\n
Some good habits come easily to me. I go to bed before midnight, and I get up before 8, even without an alarm, even on weekends. I eat regular, healthy meals. I keep up my hobbies: I read and I knit more or less daily.<\/p>\n
What I’ve lost is the ability\/energy\/habit to do things that require planning and preparation. I have barely been out walking since last autumn. I’ve hardly been to any cultural events. I haven’t been to the gym even once since quarantine rules were lifted.<\/p>\n
I know what I need for my well-being: exposure to nature, exposure to culture, exercise, creativity, novelty. (Not in equal amounts or with equal frequency.)<\/p>\n
Commitments do the trick for me. The public commitment to work from the Urb-it office on Wednesdays has been entirely voluntary but has gotten me there every single week. The daily workout challenge at 13|37 did the same for exercise. So I’m going to commit a lot more now.<\/p>\n
I’ve bought tickets to a concert series for myself and Eric.<\/p>\n
I’ve signed up for a short embroidery course and a short crochet course. (Without Eric.)<\/p>\n
I’ve installed a habit tracking app to make sure I get at least 15 minutes of exercise every day. 15 minutes a day is ridiculously little but since there have been days when I haven’t even set foot outside the house, it’s going to be an improvement. Start small. Something is better than nothing.<\/p>\n
The other habit I’m already tracking is daily blogging. I know I want to do it, and I know I can do it because I’ve done it in the past, and it isn’t even hard, but sometimes I just don’t, for no particular reason at all. Thus far it looks like the nudging is working very well. I don’t even need the app’s notifications to remind me – the mere knowledge that it’s there and I can say “Done” at the end of the day is enough to make me do it.<\/p>\n
I still need some kind of commitment to nudge me to get out in nature regularly. Still figuring out what and how I can commit to, to make that happen. I dislike hiking with strangers, so signing up for any kind of group hikes would be counterproductive. And I enjoy nature a lot more when it’s “proper” nature, not just a small nature reserve in the city, but longer outings require some advance planning. Maybe the new habit I need to get into is not “go out and walk every Saturday” but “sit down every Thursday and plan a walk for the weekend”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Still energized after my vacation, I’m making a new effort to get my energy levels up and improve my mental health. The quarantine years messed me up, and the end of quarantine didn’t magically fix things. Some good habits come easily to me. I go to bed before midnight, and I get up before 8, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,4,768],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-observing_the_self","category-photography-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16009"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16013,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16009\/revisions\/16013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}