Priorities
When consistency has been established in any domain, it becomes very difficult to break it. However, habits that are so perfectly chosen, that they should stay with you for life are few and far between. The very first habit that comes to mind is marriage. I cannot figure out any conceivable path that would be better in any way shape or form. There might be a handful more, and I can think of a couple of them that work for me personally, but I cannot think of anything more generally applicable. So how do you know when the time has come to ditch one or two of your habits?
We just got back home from Christmas celebration at my parents. We live in different cities now, with around 4 hours drive between, and that means that we cannot see each other that often. If you do the math for the remainder of your life together, you will easily see that every one of these occasions must be considered sacred time. My writing has been a non-negotiable habit for me for the past 211 consecutive weeks. But this time, I felt that I had to focus elsewhere. My plan for the Christmas holidays is simple. Build Lego and play Nintendo with my boys and do not spend a single drop of thought energy on work or other chores, like blog writing. This was the first time I honestly just felt like “f**k it”. I don’t care about the blog today. A high-risk maneuver, but I felt confident not to lose the habit, and here I am, writing away a little later. Weekly writing is important because I think it is very healthy to sit down once per week and collect your thoughts from the past seven days in writing. I don’t know exactly why I must do this, but I can feel it strongly in my gut. I am grateful that I have established a habit so strong and disciplined that I now feel free. It does not feel like a chore anymore. It is just something that is there, kind of like brushing your teeth. You wouldn’t argue with yourself whether that is a good habit or not. You just do it and come out better as a result.
The second habit that got the long finger is that for the past four years I have played a Christmas carol on my Otamatone and published a video on Christmas eve, just for the fun of it. I never preload it, so that means I must go away and play in the middle of the most wonderful day of the year. Even if it is only 15 minutes, it is still quite a high cost, so it better be worth it. This year, I couldn’t present an argument within me that it was worth it. Maybe I have run out of beautiful Christmas carols to destroy, or maybe I am becoming too skilled at playing the Otamatone. If the pitch begins to sound somewhat decent, the fun is gone. Any habit like this will inevitably improve over time as you improve your craft. That, or the production quality needs to improve or whatever. I was thinking about recording a two-part song with harmonies. On the other hand, recording multi-takes and mixing and recording with click tracks and headphones… we are clearly into different territory now compared to a 15-minute craft with a smartphone, a Bluetooth speaker with karaoke tracks and a weird instrument from Japan. Consequently, the habit should end here. In its place, I just disconnected mentally from pretty much everything and went with the flow, to see where the stream would take me.
Anyway, all good things come to an end and bills must be paid. So tomorrow, I will go back to work a little. It’s a pity that I couldn’t achieve more family time uninterrupted, but I lost 1-2 days in the final week before Christmas due to illness. I coughed so hard I nearly threw up and decided that resting was the wiser option. The exact same thing happened this summer holiday for me, illness in the last week before signing off on vacay mode meant a couple of missed deadlines. And then it was back to the office in the first vacation week. Truly annoying, but it is also true that we can never choose what happens to us. But we will always have the freedom to choose how we respond to it. A friend of mine once said that a hallmark of age (and wisdom) is the ability to snap back to normal baseline whenever something happens that angers you. In the grand scheme, most things that annoy are just one pixel in one frame in the ultra-high definition-high frame rate movie that is your life. Don’t give your problems any more attention than they deserve. It is much better to be present, especially so when spending time together with your family during Christmas.