One More Time, For Science

Summary: Retrospection on failing to maintain daily posting and other habits. I have failed dozens of times in my life to replace bad habits with good ones, but I keep picking myself up and trying again!

After two full weeks of super-average progress, discipline and abstinence from lazy behavior, I allowed myself one more time, for science and for the holidays, to pull the rug and see to what I naturally gravitate. I shouldn't be surprised, after more than a thousand days wasted to addictive consumption and extinguished passion in the last decade, that I would return to that average. I didn't beat myself up this time - it was for science after all - I just allowed myself up to a week to observe my thoughts and emotions. Conclusion verified my hypothesis and the Mean Reversion Theory, and confirmed that breaking habits & establishing new ones is a long and arduous process.

Gave my thanks and gratitude for my family, friends and countless privileges this week, as I do periodically, but especially for this holiday for doing such. Learning how to organize and restructure my time to spend more of it with people I love, because ultimately what matters more than any accomplishment or achievement is life itself and sharing this finite existence with others in the same precarious disposition. Love and connection to others is more real than a high-score. My life wouldn't convey that premise. I haven't been walking the walk I talk; been tripping over hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance. I don't often heed the advice I preach... I may give great advice but take little for myself.

The truth is: life is challenging; made easier by growing up with a solid work ethic and belief system (a privilege most are seemingly deprived of), and made harder by the allure of dopamine overloading behaviors. The most fulfilling quests aren't often fun, so someone addicted to fun will often struggle with fulfillment. It is always easier to do nothing than to do something; it is especially easier if your mean/average is closer to doing nothing than something. Your high grade average can tank with just a couple low grades, and your low grade average takes much more effort to recover and rise higher.

The personalized piece of advice given most to me in my life has been "Don't be too hard on yourself!" so in the last week I simply observed and wrote in my private journal. Sure, I broke the #100Days streak 14 days in, but I managed to relax for a couple days and learned a lot about how my brain/mind seems to process goals (set by myself or imposed externally), and makes excuses, but still craves to create and ideate. And, most of all, I learned (again) that I'm not going to continue receiving spurts of motivation or willpower, and that the only way I can execute my ideas with a blunt axe is to keep sharpening or keep swinging; to keep pushing the average higher, and not let the inevitable reversions to the mean exceed the mean and go lower thereby keeping the mean low. Reverse to the mean, but bounce, and continue higher. Keep bouncing. Keep raising the average. To further relate this to trading: remember to also take your (mental) profits! In line with having realistic expectations: the road to riches is series of hills and valleys, a zigzag path littered with obstacles. Every small victory should be recognized and celebrated, but acknowledged as a stepping stone in the broader trend. Failure to take mental profits leaves one with anxiety: no proof of progress, holding baggage in confusion without mental profits to buy the dip / recover from setbacks. The good times make the hard times easier. Write down and celebrate the good times. Document when you surmounted a hill to have a healthy perspective when traversing a valley.

Not as poetic as I've phrased lessons before, but it'll do. My anxiety and madness derives from a dissonant psyche and incompatible habits. Star-faring ideas drowning in a Jungian Shadow abyss. There will likely be a few more one more times... but each shorter and shallower than the last.

Eyedea, Walking (verse 3)

    I don't expect nothing
    But the un-expectable
    The only thing I know for a fact
    Is that I'll never know too much about myself
    So I'ma keep learning
    Cause I'm determined to find what keeps this fire burning
    Turning these pages just as slow as I can
    Reading every single word from the poet within
    I float with the wind and stay content
    Wherever it carries me
    There was no beginning and there won't be an end
    I'm just a piece of the galaxy
    A seed in the soil
    A stream of consciousness
    And to the seasons I'm loyal
    Don't take my movement personal
    It's not that I don't dig you
    But I can't be on the beach
    Of your sea when it boils
    And so I walk with the music
    Because to me that's all that's real
    Don't know where I'm going
    Don't have a plan
    I've been hearing instructions my whole life
    And I still think walking away from the rainbow
    Will make you more of a man