Behavioral Modifications Part 1

 I have been saying for more than a decade now that it is super important that I lose a significant amount of weight. I have made progress and lost it. I have slimmed down and plumped back up. It has felt like a never ending cycle and I have spent quite a bit of time trying to think through all of the factors that play a part in my failure to make important changes. 

I have been writing fiction since I was about 14 years old. I have characters and plot lines drifting around my grey matter most of the time. I enjoy writing. I enjoy journaling. I enjoy blogging. Once upon a time I took great pride in the fact that my blog went all the way back to 2005. While plotting out exactly how often I posted I realized that most years I averaged less than 2 posts per month. In reality, just like this blog, I was prone to post several times consecutively within the span of a few days or at most a few weeks and then go silent for weeks or even months at a time. My fiction writing happens at about the same frequency. 

In my last post I talked about how I got into drawing and how much pleasure it gives me to make a picture in all the different mediums I have access to. What prompts me to draw for weeks at a time at a regular pace and then not pick up a pencil for weeks, months, or years at a time? 

All of these things have one thing in common. There is a dissonance between the things I think and say that I want and what I actually do. This could also be said about me being a social creature with great connection to my friends. I say I want to have lots of people in my life. In practice I do not communicate well and I rarely leave the house to do more than pick up groceries or my child from school. I also do not invite people here. The big question in my mind when I really noticed the difference between how I feel and how I act (besides What is wrong with me... more on that later) was "What is causing me to act very differently from how I feel?"

Is it hard to find the time to sit down and write or draw? Not at all. I waste hours every day playing video games. I have my nose stuck in a book or comic book at least a few hours every day. I am a voracious reader and certainly some of that time could easily be repurposed to more productive pursuits. Then I thought about exercising. I have become something of a shut in, and being aware of the dangers of sitting around all of the time I smartly purchase exercise equipment (bike, treadmill) to give myself a means to productively sweat within the confines of my house. Have I regularly put miles on the bike or the treadmill? Not at all. In fact, I picked equipment that I could read, write, work, or game while I exercised, but I am still not matching what I say I want to do in my head.. strike that... the activity I know I need to do with my actual actions. 

With the exercise I could claim a good excuse that I did not have space for my workspace and the exercise equipment in my bedroom. Comfort and sanity dictated moving the exercise equipment into storage because earning money and sleep are even more vital to my continued existence than exercise. I have since solved that problem by building a home office with ample space for my exercise equipment. I have peddled some negligible amount on the bike. At the moment my treadmill is working hard as a drying rack for the towel I dried my hair with after my most recent shower. 

Everything I need to accomplish the things I have said I wanted is in place. I have an understanding of the virtue of drawing, writing, and exercising. I have created an environment where my desk is fairly comfortable. I do want a new chair, but I cannot blame this chair my lack of productivity. I have two excellent computers to write on. I have two different types of books I can carry with me to jot down inspiration in the moment when I am on the go (if the aforementioned trips for the child and groceries can be considering being on the go.) I like my exercise my bike. I theoretically like the treadmill as much as anyone can like a treadmill. Both can hold me. I can operate them both to some capacity. I have the comfortable clothes I need to exercise. The stage is properly set. 

Yet for all of that, I am not writing regularly. I am not exercising much at all. My drawing is the most consistent of these habits but could be improved. What is in my way? The answer to this question is simple. These positive behaviors of exercising, writing, and drawing do not create a positive immediate consequence that overrides the pleasure I am getting from the things I am doing instead of writing, drawing, or exercising. 

Let's take this morning as an example up until about half an hour ago when I started this post. 

I woke up a little after 8. My weekend routine is a bit more relaxed than during the week when I would have been up around 630. I luxuriated in my bed for about 30 minutes stretching away the O.M.P.s (Old Man Pains for the uninitiated)  that had overtaken me during the night. I eventually grabbed my phone, scrolled through Google News and then checked my eBay notifications. Two packages needed to be shipped. 

I rolled into a sitting position proudly ignoring new O.M.P.s and handled the morning business in the bathroom. I then grabbed a water and stumbled into my office. I stumbled right back out again and got my laptop off my bedside table where I had left it after running the battery down playing Final Fantasy V last night before bed but after watching Shang-Chi Legend of the Ten Rings. Good movie. Great game. 

I got the laptop set up on the desk and plugged in. I docked to my multiple monitor setup because why not. I booted the Dell and after a cursory glance at eBay to see I am waiting on one payment to be able to pack and ship everything I launched Magic the Gathering Arena. This is what gets my neurons firing in the morning. 

I played Rakdos Vampires for a while. Blood Tokens are really neat. When I built out the deck yesterday I was intermittently chuckling with delight. I won the first game I played, lost the next two badly, and then switched to my Goblins deck to finish out my daily quests. Arena is even more addictive than playing MtG with a friend because of the ability to earn rewards through regular play. Wizards of the Coast shall always have a hold over me. After taking a really fun loss to a mono black zombies I went and tweaked my own mono black zombie deck (by far my current favorite in an environment overrun with complex control decks of about 4 different varieties) and played two final games making changes after the first one. Because of the control heavy metagame it is hard to tell when a deck is misfiring due to poor construction or if you are just being beaten mercilessly again by yet another control deck. 

I logged off smiling and packed up my two paid auctions. I love packing up packages for eBay. My old boss Erik Hess will forever live inside my brain. When he was first showing me how to pack and ship for Sci Fi City I slapped together a package quickly. He came in and checked my work and said," Sloppy work, Mr. Cantrell." He delivered this so straight faced and seriously before breaking out in a grin that left me chuckling that it implanted itself in my brain. Now when I am doing anything that involves presentation of any kind and don't end with a great result Erik delivers that line in my brain. Oddly enough this motivates me to pack and ship my packages with a great amount of care. 

I spent some time with the kid. I ate a Pop Tart because it is grocery day and there is not a better choice in the house. Then while talking to Teagan I popped open Final Fantasy V and started working my way through the Library of the Ancients. She likes to watch me play and often explains," I am that pink haired girl." I never know if she means Lenna or Farris though I have for years believed that Farris identifies as male and respect his right to do so. (At the moment I do not recall if Farris ends up a Princess or a Pirate in the end, but a plot point of the game is that Farris is genetically female and presents as a male. Good on you Square Enix for being ahead of the times with FFV even if this may have been unintentional.) 

After an hour or so I pulled myself out of FFV. I could easily have sat here until lunch time pressing WASD and the Enter keys intermittently and finding myself well entertained. Thankfully, today is the day I am trying a new system to force some behavioral modifications. After texting a bit with Whitneigh and getting the music playing I started this post.

Was any part of my morning wrong? No. I am relaxed. I am starting to get a bit peckish for real food though a grocery pick up will have to be executed before I can do anything about that. The reality is that I prioritized activities that were immediately rewarding.  Until this post I was not practicing the craft of drawing, writing, or gaining the long term benefits of exercise and healthy diet which will lengthen my life and relieve, reduce, or even eliminate OMPs. 

The funny part is all of these things are really high in my thoughts because I want to modify by automatic behaviors to match my values. That is what eventually drove me to writing this post more than any real desire to do so. Don't get me wrong. I am having fun explaining myself, but I would rather be laying in bed resting or playing more FFV. 

How do I fix this?

For that I need a plan, some self examination, a contract with myself, a few mason jars, and a bunch of glass beads. I know I can change my behavior. I have done it more than a few times in my life. There are two real things I am working on here while another two are simply experiments in force multiplication. When I do something, I tend to go all in. 

Here is the start of my plan:

List the things you want to change and why you want to change them.

• I want to control my diet and exercise to get myself down to a healthy weight. I want to do this so I will live longer generally because I enjoy being alive but specifically so I be with my family as long as humanly possible with a goal of not dropping dead until (hopefully long after) Teagan is grown.
• I want to stop spending money frivolously. I have some larger investments like a truck, camper, and solar panels for my house that I am preventing myself from being able to do by impulse buys on Amazon (Deep addiction). I have quite a bit more stuff than is necessary for my survival and happiness. 
• I want to blog regularly because I enjoy the act of writing and the vulnerability of sharing my thoughts and feelings with (potentially) the whole world. I want to develop, write, and publish a novel because I want to prove to myself that I can. If writing provided a bit more income that wouldn't hurt my feelings but it is not the motivation behind my writing. I want to journal regularly because it keeps my thoughts focused and lets me work through my emotions in a healthy way. 
• I want to draw because it is fun, relaxing, and makes me feel good about myself. I like sharing my experiments. I do not want to be a professional artist. This is a fantastic outlet for my creativity and a challenge to my technical ability. 

Establish goals

• Write an hour a day. Sharing blog posts on a schedule adds accountability and enjoyment. 
• Draw one picture to my own satisfaction per day. Posting to social media occasionally adds accountability and enjoyment.
• Exercise a minimum of one hour per day. Tracking this provides accountability. 
• Eliminate sugar snacks and limit carbs. 
• Control my spending by only buying things I need or have a specific use for. 

Create operational parameters

•  My budget for online shopping is now $0. To earn money to spend I have to complete positive tasks. 
•  Each hour of exercise earns me a bead. If I exercise 7 days per week for a minimum of one hour I can reward myself money in my budget for online shopping. 
• Each hour spent writing earns me a bead. If I write 7 days per week for a minimum of one hour I can reward myself with money in my budget for online shopping. I must post a blog post no later than Monday and Thursday each week to qualify. 
• Each drawing I complete to my own satisfaction earns me a beed. If I create at least 7 drawings each week I can reward myself with money in my budget for online shopping.    
• The week runs Sunday through Saturday. The first Sunday is 14 November 2021. A budget constraint of $0 means I cannot buy anything for myself online until at least 21 November 2021. 
• These virtual dollars cannot exceed my real world budget. They can be saved from week to week. I will track my virtual money in my planner. 
• Bead counting and qualifying will happen Sunday morning before any activities to earn rewards take place. 

Yep. I am rewarding myself for positive behavior by moving colored beads around between jars. When I finish this post I will walk over to my little counter set up and drop a blue bead in my rewards jar. This will be my first ever earned reward tracking bead. It is odd how much I am looking forward to earning it. My hope is that by giving myself an obvious tangible reward for each of these activities that I will practice positive behaviors until they become ingrained habits. 

I also know that you cannot make cessation an action. Rewarding myself a bead for not shopping during the week was something I considered, but instead I am incentivizing a controlled version of a behavior I enjoy to incentivize regular behaviors I do not enjoy so much in the moment. The idea makes sense in my head. We will see how effective the experiment is. 

I have also chosen three activities with various level of immediate rewards themselves. I don't feel very good after exercise. Those OMPs along with sweat and labored respiration are not things I enjoy. The rewards for exercise happen in the future until you are fairly fit. I will have wins along the way with it becoming easier to exercise and my clothes fitting better before needing smaller sizes. Writing certainly gives a sense of satisfaction that is somewhat immediate when I put a post online but much less so with a journal entry or adding to my current novel. Drawing most always makes me happy while I am doing it. The final product sometimes earns me a compliment here and there which never hurts. 

That is what I am working on. It feels ambitious. It feels like I am tackling a lot at once and that may set me up for failure. I have never been afraid to fail. All failure is just feedback. If I use that to adjust my approach I will eventually succeed at everything on a long enough timeline.  For now I need to get out of this chair, stretch out some of the OMPs, and do something more with this exercise bike than just talk about it.