The Importance of Routine

The importance of routine can't be understated especially during the time of COVID where most people are unemployed or working from home. A good schedule is great for your well being and health. Here are some of my thoughts about why a routine is important. 

1) It keeps you on schedule. 

A good routine keeps you going with forward momentum. When l was in quarantine and isolation my routine was simple; wake up, clean up, read, eat, go for walks, and play video games. It kept me busy and engaged during the entire period, leaving me with very few moments where I was watching the paint dry on the wall.  The structure in a good routine can make or break you. Use it wisely. Lose it and everything drops like dominos. 

2) It's important for your well being, health, and mental health. 

A good routine makes you feel good. The fact that I've been writing blogs at the same time every night makes me feel really good. My attitude improves every time I do it. If you're used to working all the time and then all of sudden you're at home in isolation for two months, you're going to have a hard time adjusting. I would say that my time away from work was actually bad for me in terms of mental health and well being. I'm a social person that's used to a certain amount of contact, discussion, and affirmation from others. Of course, when I don't get that, I become a much different person. Not a worse person, but definitely not a better person for that matter either. 

Here's a funny story to show how important routine is for your mental health. 

One time I was chillin' with a couple friends and one of them was wasted. I took a Lyft home that night but my drunk friend wouldn't let me go home because he said he had to sober up and give me a ride home. He said he couldn't let me go via Lyft because he had to go through the routine of giving me a ride home. It was an interesting moment because although he was pretty buzzed he knew he still had to stick to what he was used to in order to feel right and/or good. Very important.

3) It improves you and everything you do. 

This is commonsense but it should be looked into. Every routine you adhere to improves you in some way. Cleaning the dishes at a certain time every day? That's an improvement on the character of the individual. Practice the guitar every day. That's +10 guitar skill ability. Work four or five days a week? That gives you money in your bank account. Going for a walk three times a week? That reduces stress and reduces calories. The point of doing all these things is to do them often enough so that you develop a routine. Once the routine sinks in you get those much sought after number of hours. Once you develop the fabled 10,000 hours in any one skill, you've begun to climb the stairs of excellence towards mastery. Of course, you never really master anything in life, but you can get better and better even when it seems like you've plateaued. An amazing feeling.     

4) You can find out what works for you in life and change as needed and accordingly. 

A routine helps you figure out what works for you in life and allows you to change your routine as needed and accordingly. With a good routine, you can truly be yourself, find yourself, and even do soul searching. Without it, you are aimless, adrift, and hugging the shore, meaning you'll be too afraid to try new things or change up your same old, same old. Are you still the same person year after year but want to change? Change up your routine and create a new one. That is an easy way to improve and/or change your character. Remember to find out what works for you. Stick to it or change up it as needed. Rinse and repeat.

Covid And the Plague of Lighthouse Keepers

Hello, everybody. Back again, with more writing exercises and ideas. The last two posts were fairly genteel posts about how to be a great healer in competitive video games. I'd like to take a departure from that to talk about something substantially more serious. However, if you are a competitive gamer that plays Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, or Team Fortress 2, I highly recommend reading those last two posts.

So, what I'd like to discuss here is a fairly simple idea that I've touched upon already in older posts from weeks ago; Despite the mass communication of the internet, COVID-19 has caused a major disruption in all of our lives, turning us into a plague of lighthouse keepers. 

There are already a lot of people in our communities that don't like to be around others. With COVID, they have an excuse to be even more distant and go even more into isolation than previously before. Here's the kicker; until COVID is dealt a grievous blow, we're stuck in this mode of humanity, which is terrible for our health, well being, and mental health. 

Next, I'd like to go into these details as they pertain to myself. I'm naturally a very outgoing extrovert that likes to be around others. I've been on a leave of absence to be safe and stay away from potential COVID spreaders for two months as I work retail. The only contact I have with people right now is when I talk to my family, when I text friends, when I direct message people on social media, or when I play online video games with voice chat or text chat. Because of all that COVID hasn't really affected me much, but it has impacted me enough for me to take notice and write my thoughts about it in a meaningful way.

You lose a sense of community and mental well being when you're not around people and start spending almost all of your time alone. I'm actually really looking forward to going back to work in June not because I need more money [thank God], but because I'm used to a certain amount of screentime with others, engaging in conversation, and being acknowledged as a person for who I am in my community and workplace. 

Without that I'm a much different sort of person; I stop talking on voice coms and text chat in online competitive video games because I don't see the need for it, I stop direct messaging on social media apps because I think my people need more space away from me, I give my family more space and seclude myself more in whatever ways I can. The question is, is this good for me, and is it sustainable in the long run? What are the ramifications of living life in a lighthouse keeper sort of way? 

For some people, none of this might apply to them because some people naturally don't like to be around others much, and try to spend as much time away from them as possible, as well as saying as little as possible. Obviously, for those people, COVID is helping them out in a societal way. But for the vast majority of the population, they need that social construct in order to engineer their lives in a more meaningful way, myself included. 

We can't all keep going on like this and we know it. I've done really well under the circumstances but the show can't go on. As great as the digital age of the internet is in sharing and communication, it's a piss poor substitute for the real world. And that, essentially, is where the problem of COVID lies therein; it forces us to disperse and stay away from each other, and possibly even stop caring as much as we used to, and instead turn to our own quarantined, lockdown, isolated lives, looking for that spark of inspiration, that zest for life, that we simply can't get anywhere else. 

Still waiting for my saviour,
storms tear me limb from limb

Riders on the Storm

Back again, so very soon, after not writing much for the entire month. Well, actually, that isn't completely true. For you see, during this time that I've been on leave from work for two months, I've been writing a long short story, it's not finished yet. It's a better, more refined version of my zombie virus short story entitled Human, Ghoul, Zombie, which you can read here. Other than that, yes, the writing has been sparse. But we'll see how long that lasts. 

Here I'd like to explore the idea of walking the Earth, not only cognizant of yourself, but also dealing with how the pandemic has forced us all into an all too close relationship with ourselves, our families, our friends, and coworkers. I haven't seen too many people writing about this. Perhaps psychology blogs are all over this, who knows.

First off, we're all riders on the storm. We're all walking the Earth, in our own inimitable way. Before the pandemic life was simple, easy, and carefree. Now we are all forced into isolation if we're sick, isolation if we're not sick too, and we've been forced into an all too close relationship with our friends, families, coworkers, and loved ones. 

I don't know but I've been told that in other cultures they don't really have a problem with that. In fact, in some cultures, they prefer their people to be extremely close to each other; mom/dad/kids/grandpa-ma all live together and in poorer parts of the world there are sometimes entire families that live in one room together. The thought of that to most Americans is absolutely unacceptable. But it has its virtues. 

The Japanese make the best astronauts. Why? Because they're used to being confined in small spaces, they get along well with each other, and they're very polite. Why, if Americans were more like the Japanese, there wouldn't be so much dysfunction in families or in the workplace. 

In my own personal experience, I would say I've handled lockdown with family 24/7 pretty well. But not great. I'm not Japanese astronaut status, yet. What am I doing that's working well? 

For one thing, I've found that I'm actually able to find the breaking points with the people around me; I know when and if I set them off, when and if I need to give them space, when and if I need to cool it, and when and if I can engage with that person more in a friendly nature, and lastly, when and if I'm set off/when and if I need a break and/or time out. I'm talking about this as it pertains to myself, my family, and friends but it also applies to my work life as well. 

The lockdown has forced many families into situations where it's easy to be mean or even small to your family, friends, and coworkers. Familiarity breeds contempt as they say. What we're trying to do here is to avoid all that, or if it's impossible to avoid it, to mitigate it as much as possible in order to strengthen relationships and make life better and easier during the most brutal moment in our lives. 

Obviously, if someone ticks you off, you should say something, right? Yes, but watch out, what you say to the other person might affect your life in a much more severe way than you think, especially if you live with that person, if you work with that person closely, or if they're a good friend of yours that you see on a regular basis. It's best to be lighthanded when it comes to dropping the hammer on people that are in your immediate close circle that you see all the time or live with. When it comes to severe arguments, and yes, they are inevitable I'm afraid, remember that it's always the person who gives in and bends the knee and stops fighting that is the better man. You can argue till you're blue in the face but if you see this person constantly you're a lot smarter if you just bend the knee and find some reasonable accommodations between you two. This goes for social and/or work relationships too.

Lastly, to close I should add that life with my family has become like a dramatic space opera; where I'm confined inside a small space shuttle with three other people, and everything I say to them, or do in the space shuttle, every action, large or small, has repercussions or positive effects that strengthen or diminish the morale of everybody aboard the shuttle. Obviously, I want the crew to make it to their destination and finish the mission. In order to make sure that happens each person has to play their part. Or if I play my part in such a manner that it's so good that I astound myself, what the other crew members do won't be as crucial, leading to a stronger party, like a pickup group in a video game with strong leaders and supporting roles that carry the team to victory. The point of all of this is simply to make you a more thoughtful person; the process is daunting, but the reward is a lifetime achievement. 


"The world on you depends, our life will never end"