Making some periodic life changes to break periodic behavior...

It's not as contradictory as it sounds. :)

So about the middle of August every year, I start to do an upheaval of my life from the bottom up. I realized this when I though about the last time I tried to enact life changes and it was about the same time as last year. It's like a second resolution phase for me. I think the most common reason is that this is when I realize that more than half of the year is up and I have a lot to do to keep pace. Oddly enough my August resolution phase is much more effective than my January one. I think that's because in August I know where I need to be for the rest of the year and am more motivated to take steps (motivation for me is much lower in the winter months).

I had wondered if this is the same for everyone as it is for me. Well, one of the most important lessons of life I've ever learned is that if you wonder about something and the answer can be looked up, look it up. So I did so, by googling for "most common month for life changes". I got three responses: most common month for weddings, births, and suicide. Those are some dramatic and disparate life changes.

Realizing that a month for life change probably hasn't been established (honestly expected it to be decided and that it'd be January), I decided to search for "most common month". This is the list of MCM's that I have determined:

• Birth - October (by average) Source: WebMD
• Weddings - June Source: ARA via Favorideas.com
• Suicide - April (but only by anecdote so I won't provide source)
• Homicide - torn between June and July (again not agreed)
  
• Poultry Food poisoning - December
• Loss of virginity for teenagers - June
• Car crashes - December
• Arrested for DUI - October
• Tornadoes - April
• Pruning Grapes - March
• Taking the SAT - June
• Catching a cold - December
• Catching the flu - February
  
• Plowing (Ploughing!) - September
• Lightning strikes in Florida - July
• Divorce - January
• Mating of Adders - April
• Arson - May
• Finding "crop circles" - July

And as far as resolutions? There are no stats. I guess it's a new field. There are actually a lot of "significant life events" that do not have an established month, and I guess that's good. Better for some things to remain random.

As for my life changes, the most crucial a bit too personal and I won't share them here. But one of the main ones is to consume food more healthily. I've depended too much on packaged food and fast food, and it's time for me to cook as many meals as I can, saving those meals where I eat splurgingly (spellcheck won't give me that word but I'll take it anyway) to be the meals I eat with others. Another is to get to bed at a more reasonable hour when I can (with work sometimes that is impossible). A third is to get into more social sports, such as baseball, tennis, and possibly handball, if the group that I'm organizing with will start moving on it.

I guess the key lesson here is to know when you're in a rut and try to break it, which I have started to do. Maybe if the world tried to do the same there wouldn't be a most common month for anything. I think maybe that'd be better for everyone involved.

Spam sucks...

I have two accounts, one of which (unfortunately my main one) is impossible to use due to the daily choking of spam. I get about 250 spam messages on it a day. No joke. The filters do catch 90% of it, but that still leaves 25 a day to clean out manually. I think I'll make it one of my goals this year to keep my email down to 0 each day.

Anywho, good morning. I'm slowly adjusting my schedule (goal #19) waking up earlier and earlier each day (today it was 0609h). One day I'll be at the goal time of 0500h, which will let me exercise in the mornings, meditate, and do my brain exercises all without losing my schedule. I think that I'll also work on posting twice a day, once at the beginning of each day, and once at the end. It'll help to bracket my day a little bit. At the very least recording my waking time in the morning will let me keep track of my progress.

Speaking of progress tracking, while 43things is a great tool for making resolutions, it's not so good at tracking progress. I may have to create a tool for this, because there doesn't seem to be a good one out there to record this kind of general progress. For now, I'll keep the info in an XML, just to parse it later. One of my biggest problems though is that I don't like to record failure. That'll be a psychological hurdle for me to surpass.

At least I'm not feeling nearly as groggy as I was yesterday. That's an improvement.