Weekly Improvement Thread - Feb 2nd 2025

I successfully did my first dry January. I'm currently sitting at 45 days of no alcohol.

One thing I've noticed recently is that I'm not really sleeping that well. Part of it is due to wanting to game late into the night but the other half is that night time procrastination because I don't want the day to be over yet. So I stay up far too late and then am just a zombie the next morning. I know I can fix it by just going to sleep at an appropriate time but I feel like the underlying reasons why I keep doing this need to be addressed.

Other than sleep issues, I do need to do more physical activities and eat better. I've been semi-consistent with calisthenics stuff but without any real program. My main desire at this point is just to stem the decay of my body and stop my back from hurting all the fucking time.

Short update: We are still ballin'. Life is posting up 2-man coverage on me, but we ballin' regardless.

I had a pretty great January. I successfully transitioned away from eating meat and now i'm on to culling other animal products with a goal of being vegan completely this year.

For February I want to drink less and get back on my weight loss grind. Definitely need less cannibus to make that happen.

Overall i'm feeling really good though! Like being part of this comm thank you.

Let's start off with a positive, I have officially completed dry January. I don't struggle with alcoholism, but it's good to be off the stuff.

The second thing is that I want to learn how to cope with ADHD. I'm worried about some of the strings attached that will come with getting meds, but if I should try to do so anyways then by all means.

This week marks my second month smoke free, still going strong

I've been consistent with running lately and back on my stretching game. Right now struggling to write a song.

I was going to say that I made no major progress this month, but that's actually not true! I don't really have issues with waking up in the morning, but on days where I don't have anything scheduled I would often just rot in bed on my phone for hours and hours, which is bad enough on its own but has all kinds of knock-on effects. I solved this with a stupidly simple rule I set for myself: don't unlock your phone until you've gotten out of bed, gotten fully dressed, and made your bed.

I know that sounds like a "just do it" kind of solution, but for me it literally solved the problem overnight (at least so far), and I've had zero problems with compliance. I think the reason that it was easy to adhere to is that it's not so much that I'm addicted to checking my phone as I have trouble tearing myself away from it. So if I just don't start looking at it, my desire to look at it isn't that great. I recognize that this may not be true if you're fixated on being up-to-the-minute on news updates or responding to social media replies or whatever, but that hasn't been an issue for me for many years.

It usually goes one of two ways: I either hop out of bed right away, or I just lay there and think about stuff. They're both positive--either I get a nice early start to the day, or it gives me time to process things, do problem solving, or just be without immediately running away from my thoughts by flooding my brain with stimuli.

So yeah, that's been the big positive change! Other than that, I've also been doing more meal prep, which is good.

On the negative side, I've also been snacking more because my roommate keeps buying snacks and sharing them with me--I've had to tell them to keep them in their room when practical because I just can't control myself with snacks even though I'm pretty stringent with my regular meals. Hoping that will help me cut back a bit. For me, the best kind of snack is one that requires significant time to prepare, since I can set my portion size in advance and there's little risk I'll go through the whole process again just to have a bit more.

I also haven't been working on my project much at all this past month. I let scope creep get the best of me and really burnt myself out...I really need to just call this part good enough so I can move on and build up some momentum again. I'm going to make a commitment right now: I'll work on it for at least 30 minutes today and report back!

edit: whoops, I forgot lol. Well, I put in a few hours today, so hopefully that makes up for things! Made some more progress and reacquainted myself with the codebase. Not a sea change or anything, but I think as long as I consistently work on it I'll get it done without too much trouble. My goal is to work on it at least an hour a day until it's done.

Recovering from having COVID this past week. Pretty much the only way to have topped off an absolute dogshit January.

Aside from just testing negative, at least it seems like it was also at the root of most of my dad's recent struggles throughout the month after coming home from the hospital for a separate health issue. As long as he shows he's regained his strength I should be able to start dedicating some time to working out again. Going to have to see how hard I can push myself though. When I had COVID two years ago it took me a while to build my stamina back up.