Behavioral Modifications Week Five

As an experiment in behavioral modification I have failed in twice and succeeded twice.  One of my successes is completely unintentional. When I started this protocol five weeks ago I set out with some simple goals:

• Draw something every day
• Write an hour every day 
• Post two blogs each week on Monday and Thursday
• Exercise a minimum of one hour each day

At the close of week three I decided against continuing my efforts into writing daily and drawing. I found myself interested in maintaining in my twice a week blog posts. They felt interesting to me. I like blogging even when I do not know most of my small audience. I was not enjoying putting work into scripts, novels, and Dungeons and Dragons campaigns.

Some of that is related to a crisis of identity. I do not like calling myself a writer anymore. I do not have a problem labeling myself a blogger. I am cutting a fine distinction with that one. A blogger is a writer who posts their works to a specialized type of website. Why, then, am I not by default a writer who can have confidence in the things I am working on? 

The purpose of writing an hour or more each day was a sort of "fake-it-until-you-feel-it," effort. I was attempting to overcome my deeply held imposter syndrome by committing myself to the activity without worrying about what I was producing beyond the blog posts. The more I put words to the page the less I enjoyed each project until the frustration was tempting me to cheat the hour in more and more creative ways. I know I wanted to keep writing. I also knew I needed to stop and examine my protocol a bit. I am still in that phase of this thing. 

Drawing hit a similar place of frustration. The goal is to have confidence in my own skills. My ability to imitate other artists work is as strong as it has ever been. Give me a masterpiece by Rob Liefeld, Frank Cho, or Tony S. Daniel and I can make a near perfect copy. That does take mechanical skill, but like my writing, it makes me feel like an imposter rather than an artist. I want to be able to create original compositions of something other than nude women. Yes, I am incredibly good at those. Thank you skill building in my puberty. 

In On Writing Stephen King said something to the effect of," To be great writer you need to be a great reader." I really should have cracked open my copy and got the quote exactly right, but when I first read that line years ago I was very encouraged. I am an voracious reader. I devour books on a epic scale. I think it keeps my imagination a fertile place. I do get ideas for stories by the minute. 

I think the spirit of that quote is boiled down to the idea that if you want to do something you have to be a consumer of the medium. Want to be a fantastic musician or singer? Surround yourself with great music. Want to be a great marksman? Get yourself to the range. Practice shooting. Talk to other enthusiastic gun people. Want to write and draw comic books? Read tons of them and surround yourself with other comic book lovers.

Which is where my personal experience runs completely counter to Stephen King's advice. I have gotten to know a few professional comic book writers over the last few years. Some of them I met through the podcast. A few of them I have become familiar enough with to know that they are not constantly feeding themselves content from the comic book industry. In fact a few of the people I know who have recently put out independent comics are actively critical of the comic book industry in general and produce their content while ignoring the work of the masters. I will say, carefully without naming names, that I don't like those people much. There is a smugness that is common among them that I don't care for. In a few cases, I avoid them and their work as a result. Once I see something like that it is hard for me to unsee. 

In designing my behavioral modification protocols I did some things right and a few wrong. My first mistake was trying to change too much at one time. Drawing, writing, blogging, and exercising is a lot to add to a day already filled with work, kid, eating, sleeping, and a great amount of time wasting that I consider vital to my human experience. I accomplished all of the goals for the first three weeks, but as I talked about before there were days I really phoned in the effort. I am not comfortable with phoning in any effort. When I do something, I invest myself in it. I want the effort to produce something of quality I can feel a sense of pride in. 

I should have prioritized my efforts a bit differently. The exercise is vital to longevity. I needed to get it going, keep it going, and make it a habit that would not shake as I worked on transforming my life. I have done that. Big win. Let's talk about how that is going since I feel like I need to celebrate a bit. Yes there are challenges with the exercise too, but overall it has been a huge improvement to my life. 

Last week I spent eight hours, fifty-four minutes, and 25 seconds exercising. That is an increase of nearly two hours over the week before. I burned 11, 212 calories last week which is about 18% more calories than the week before. Both of those are personal bests in the last five weeks of exercise.  I also put 114.5 miles on the exercise bike. That feels like a good improvement over the prior week of 101 miles. It feels amazing compared to my first week where I managed 60.51 miles. 

The exercise is working though I haven't changed my eating habits properly to take full advantage of it. I dropped about a pound and two ounces this week. Given how poorly I have eaten I am not upset at that number. Diet is going to have to see some changes after Christmas dinner. The good thing is that the effort expended for the exercise encourages me to think about what I am eating. It is enhancing my will power and should make good choices much easier when I get a bit more serious about this. 

That is the thing. Losing weight and becoming fit (I wanted to say more fit, but that felt disingenuous) gives me lots of positive gains in my life. I gain stamina, confidence, flexibility, access to a wider variety of clothing, and the ability to nearly keep up with an energetic six year old as I continue my fitness journey. At this juncture, I do not believe that I gain so much from writing or drawing. They are both forms of entertainment for me. I do not see that changing and these hobbies that I play at becoming a source of income. 

Since writing and drawing are just ways to calm myself and spend time I can take them or leave them. Exercise is necessary. It can transform my life and my quality of life. As much as I did get a small sense of satisfaction from experiencing a bead clink into the jar after completing a task I have to admit that I was going through the motions for the hobbies that I was not ready to admit are not tied to my sense of identity. 

I do not consider myself an artist or a writer. I am a person who can write. I am a person who has the ability to draw. Those are important distinctions. Until they change in my mind writing and drawing will always stay hobbies. My passion for them will wax and wane. 

Speaking of losing interest, when I boiled things down to just focusing on exercise two things happened rapidly. First, I put a bit more time into exercise. I didn't double or triple my efforts, but I did get some incremental gains. Sustained change comes from making small changes. The funny part is I didn't realize I was doing that much more (except for the day I did get three sessions on the bike) as I was doing it. I was going a little faster, I was getting a little further, and I was staying at things a little longer. 

Secondly, I quit using the jars. I don't need that motivational system for the exercise. I feel better when I have pedaled. If I put it off I start to get stiff and sore. I feel like not needing the activity reinforcement system to motivate me is a good sign. 

I also keep hearing how I need to take a day off and recover. I oddly fear that. I am still building a habit here. It has been 35 days since I started. I am not convinced that if I take a day off of it that I will be able to convince myself to get back to it and not start making excuses to take another day... and another... and another. That is how habits fail. 

I have not picked up my Oculus Quest 2 in over a week. I have little interest in it. I will hold onto it for a few months. Then, if I have not found any further interest in VR (beyond yet another place to watch Netflix) I will probably give it away or sell it. I am not willing to pay subscription fees for guided exercises. Who knew I was going to be more old school than new?

I did pull out the archery stuff. Schedule and weather have kept me from shooting as much as I would like. I need the practice. I spent about an hour on it this week. My Mom's bow needs the arrow guard replaced. Dad noticed his needed it too. He went to an archery store and got the supplies to do them both. His bow is with him and I assume being worked on. He is a bit craftier than I am so if I can have him make the repairs I will wait... a little bit. 

I did stitch up the shotgun scabbard to make a really nice quiver. Since it has the molle system I was able to add a pouch for my arm guard, glove, and trigger . I absolutely hate the trigger. It needed a place to be stored though. I also filled it with an additional two dozen arrows. I found my larger target which will help me in two ways. I will be able to take both targets out and stack them up. That should have me shooting more level with the top target. It also will give me a larger target to aim at on the bottom. 

Since the point of the archery is to encourage me to both loosen up and to gain strength I am not too critical of my terrible aim. Putting arrows down range is good for muscles. Hitting is a bonus. Working up a sweat then becomes a side effect. Trust me, after 15 minutes of shooting I have plenty of sweat. Now it just needs to be dry enough to be outside. I want to get to the point that drawing this bow a few hundred times a day doesn't leave my muscles achy. 

I guess what this all comes down to is that I am making the things that are truly important to me work. I am going to do some research this week into adding some more exercises to increase calorie burn, gain strength, and make me more flexible. I am also going to start really digging into an effective and satisfying diet. I want to take that all step by step, but since we are approaching 2022 really rapidly it would be good to start them with the new year. 

New beginnings are good for the mind even when they are not real. I was riding earlier and looking at the nice stack of drawings I have done over the past few months. I thought it would be really cool to end 2022 with a stack of 365 plus drawings I had done. That is a neat goal. 

The problem with goals is that they are a result without a plan to get there. If all it took was setting a goal then every NFL team would get to and win the Super Bowl every year. New Year's resolutions are like that. Most people who make them make really ambitious goals for themselves without any real underpinning. Saying you are going to lose 40 pounds next year is ambitious and exciting. Saying you are going to do it by exercising every day for a set period of time and eliminating Little Debbie from your diet will increase your likelihood of success.

I may challenge myself to draw 365 pictures in 2022. That might not even take me all year. I might change it to drawing 30 pictures per month. Then again, I may not make any plans around drawing at all. It seems like there are other areas of my life that need more attention. 

Not the least of these is I need to see Spider-man: No Way Home.