9 Things Making My Life Better So Far This Year (Jan. – March 2023)
This winter has been busy and stressful, but I’ve still found a little time to enjoy things. Here are a few of them:
A new toothbrush
When I realized that my decade-old electric toothbrush was brushing only half-heartedly even with its ancient battery fully charged, I knew I had to relegate it to my travel bag and get a new one. The new one with its factory-fresh battery is, naturally, much more effective on a full charge, but, to my surprise, it also helps me reduce procrastinating from brushing my teeth. It buzzes every thirty seconds to let you know that you’re supposed to switch to a different quadrant of your mouth, and, somehow, it’s way easier for me to brush for 30s x 4 than for 2min x 1. Brains are weird, man.
Husband and I did one puzzle from this exit-room-in-a-box advent calendar every night, and I liked it so much that I bought the 2021 one for later. The puzzles are creative and, for the most part, challenging but fun. (There was only one out of the 24 that frustrated us–we figured out the solution and knew exactly what we had to do but couldn’t actually implement it. That ratio is pretty good for a regular escape room, let alone a do-it-at-home one!) It was nice to have a daily mini date night.
I drink a lot of decaf cold-brew coffee, which means I make a lot of decaf cold-brew coffee, which means I really like having multiple pitchers of decaf cold-brew coffee on the go. These ones work so well, and having multiple means I can make different flavours of coffee and tea.
A dedicated reading lamp
Sometimes, I have trouble falling asleep, and I know a lot of it has to do with light exposure. I like to read before I go to bed, but our regular overhead lights are rather bright. Instead, I wanted to mimic the low light we get from the little lamps at our family cottage. My in-laws very kindly bought me a reading lamp as a holiday gift, and it’s really nice to sit in my reading chair with its friendly yellow glow until I can’t quite focus on the book anymore.
The sidewalk outside our building
For most of last year, the sidewalk outside our building, which is the most direct route between the subway station/mall/library and our home, was under construction. To commute, I either had to take the bus two stops or take the long way around because of the various places one can and can’t cross the street. Okay, not that much longer, but still an additional five minutes of walking. But when work started again after the winter holidays, the construction was finally done! I can once again easily get to the places I have to go without taking a detour, and I appreciate that more than I did before.
The Charisma Machine by Morgan G. Ames (non-fiction book, 2019)
This study of the One Laptop Per Child movement’s work in Paraguay is an excellent history of technology. The author is careful to give all sides the most charitable possible reading, but it’s impossible to miss the gap between privileged intentions/idealistic design and practical/social realities. Overall, this is a great story to demonstrate the problems with technological solutionism, especially when would-be solvers don’t take into account the agency of the people they want to help or the limits of their own lived experience.
Fire Emblem Engage by Intelligent Systems (Nintendo Switch game, 2023)
After I got over my disappointment that this game wasn’t more of Three Houses (the previous game, which I loved), I quickly began to appreciate it for what it is. The turn-based strategy gameplay is engaging, exciting, and easier than ever in terms of UI. The “hub” activities where you boost your stats with mini-games and relationship-building busy tasks are way less fun than in Three Houses–to me, they feel like chores to get the things I want for the parts I do enjoy. However, overall, I like the battles and the simple story enough that I still can’t wait to play during my downtime.
Not using my phone
OK, so it wasn’t just because I started reading Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention… but that was the proximal spur that caused me to finally do the things I thought would be best for my health. I’ve decided to put my phone away for the weekend and, all the time, mindfully turn to my tablet (on which I have comics and magazines and the apps I need to reference non-screen stuff, like my recipe app) or my e-reader instead. This pretty much killed my bad Reddit-scrolling habit in one blow and made me feel ten times better. It also helped me get over the “need” to maximize my points/streak instead of my learning on Duolingo.
Routine
Surprising absolutely no one who knows me, it turns out I respond very well to predictability. Luckily for me, my schedule this semester had me teaching at the exact same times each day that I was on campus. By March, I was able to solidify my weekly plan to the point where I have enough flexibility that I don’t feel overwhelmed and forced to do things on certain days because they “have” to be done on the “right” day, but I still have enough structure to feel comfortable.
Bonus: not routine
I didn’t want to include this one as a “regular,” since it feels weirdly specific to me (like, even more so than the other ones above), but it was nice to spend a weekend seeing a play at the Shaw Festival with a couple good friends. Routine is great and all, but, sometimes, it’s also great to take a break from it and rediscover the parts of yourself that your current routine has been smothering. Especially when you take that break with awesome people!
If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of toothbrush did you get? Our dentist keeps saying we should consider switching to an electric toothbrush but there are so many out there…or maybe, do you have an “entry level” model you can recommend? (I use “entry level” somewhat facetiously but it probably applies nevertheless.)
Also:
“It also helped me get over the “need” to maximize my points/streak instead of my learning on Duolingo.”
It’s amazing how much you stop caring about a streak in an app when you miss just one day. I have a crossword app on my phone, solely to fill the odd desire to do a crossword conveniently every now and then. It has streaks and daily rewards and all sorts of gizmos – all I really need is to occasionally do a crossword. I “missed” some days last weekend and I noticed I am not going back to it. I mean, I do, but not every day as part of a routine. Just sometimes to fill some time running a report at work, or something.
Mine’s an Oral-B, the cheaper model available (I think). It seems just fine for me so far, though I’m told there are more expensive ones with all the bells and whistles. (Maybe literally?)
Yeah, just one day “breaking” your streak has such an outsized effect. I appreciate using streaks mindfully to keep yourself doing things that you might otherwise not be as motivated to keep consistent, but it’s really tough to walk the line between “I’m helping myself do something I want” and “all I now care about is keeping my streak and not the thing the streak is supposed to help motivate me to do.”
Cool, thanks. We’ve been looking at Oral-B. Maybe we’ll see if Costco has a double set.
I recently wrote about streaks as they pertain to rebuilding good hygiene habits myself. That’s the kind of streak I prefer to maintain, instead of a game app.