End of the... start of the... well, in between

Enjoying the lull but trying to look ahead

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

In between days status report

I don’t know about you, dear H.A.T.T.E.R.¹, but I’m enjoying this in-between period between Christmas and New Year’s. I’m off my normal publishing schedule and I’m OK with that. I needed a bit of a break and a reset and I’ll talk more about this in my Month 8 round up, which I plan to publish on January 1, 2023.

I’ve been doing a lot of work with my commonplace books lately, consolidating the entries into a new B5 notebook, adding more material for some entries, condensing some other entries and getting rid of others. Over the years I’ve compiled some material about habits, discipline and resilience and I feel the need to start putting some of it into use. 2022 has been a good year in many ways but I’ve abandoned a lot of good habits and picked up some bad habits and I’d like to change this.

New Year’s Resolutions are the kind of things that you drag out of your mental closet occasionally, choke on the psychic dust that old, failed Resolutions have been gathering and look upon with dread or shame. The odds are not good for keeping New Year’s Resolutions, mainly because many of us start them without proper preparation and planning and, for various reasons, abandon them. Like any time you try to tackle new goals, establish new habits or fix broken ones, it can be really hard to make this change.

In addition to prep and planning, any time I’ve had success with (temporarily) adopting new behaviours, I’ve found some of the following useful:

• tracking my progress (or lack thereof) in writing

• accepting some failure along the way, then carry on

• set rewards for success

• establish some accountability and have a support system (I’ve experienced this with Weight Watchers in the past)

None of these are guarantees for success but they can help.

So I thought I’d mention this in the newsletter in case any H.A.T.T.E.R.s are interested in trying to tackle some Resolutions. A few months ago I created a Discord for H.A.T. but I haven’t used it much yet. I thought that maybe if other people were interested, we could create a private, safe space for people to pursue resolutions, goals, new habit formation, etc. where we could work on accountability, support, etc. I have some things I’m going to work on in 2023, mainly with forming new habits and trying to change old ones. I may incorporate some of that into the H.A.T. newsletter but it could be done in the Discord instead.

So let me put it over to you: is anyone interested in working on Resolutions together in 2023? They can be any kind of Resolution: health based, creativity based, exercising, meditation, good habits, whatever you like. It can be as big or as small as you like; as serious or relaxed as you like. The idea is simply to introduce some positive change into your life.

(I posted in this in Substack Chat as well, so this may be the second time some of you have seen this).

If you’d like to participate in this potential accountability and support group, you can leave a comment below or E-mail me directly at markdykeman@gmail.com. We don’t have to start right on January 1 but I’ll open the Discord up that day if people want to get started and people can join in when they are ready.

Hope you are all doing well and getting some well deserved rest and relaxation!

DON’T FORGET: I’m giving away another notebook at the end of this month!

NOTEBOOK GIVEAWAY: I am giving away a MOO notebook at the end of December 2022 to the winner of a draw. It’s a A5 sized hardcovered notebook with dotted pages. Each H.A.T. subscriber automatically gets one entry into this draw if they are a subscriber as of the end of December 31, 2022.

However… you can get more entries towards the notebook draw by doing any (or all) of the following:

• Each December 2022 post on which you leave a comment will earn you an extra two chances at the draw. For example, if there are 12 posts in December and you leave a comment on each post then you can get 24 extra entries into the draw. PLEASE note: it needs to be a real, substantial comment, not just a couple of words, OK?

• If you recruit a new email subscriber to How About This during the month of December then you can get 10 extra draw entries per subscriber. In order to get the extra 10 entries, the new subscriber will have to E-mail me at markdykeman@gmail.com and they will have to tell me the email address of the person who recruited them. This email address must be the email address used to subscribe to How About This.

1. H.A.T.T.E.R. = How About This Terribly Enthusiastic Reader or How About This Temporally Engaged Reader