Ritual de lo Habitual

A lot of the bad that came with 2014, I think, came with habits --or lack of them. I read less than I've read in years in 2014. I checked out plenty of books from the library, but I finished so few. I kept picking things up and then putting them down, picking them up again and then putting them down and eventually discarding them when the failed to hold my interest.

My garden was a mess. I never really worked it, did very little to keep the deer away or the blight and predictably, my crops were very poor. My tomatoes did horribly. There were no peppers to speak of and no lettuce or spinach. I took less than ten small pumpkins at harvest and the only plant that did well was a weird zucchini that crept over everything and required nothing much but to be left alone.

I got behind on my exercise. There were months where I barely made it to the gym and even during the best of times, I was still spotty about doing the work.

There are plenty of excuses to be had: weather, stress, depression, financial struggle and access to endless hours of quality programming through the magic of Netflix.

I think I self-medicate with escapist crap when I'm down and 2014 was a year for downers --personal, professional, ecological.

But I'm building up again, starting over with some things. I already have a gardening book out and I'm looking through it for ideas on how to keep the fucking deer at bay so I can potentially have a decent growing season.

I'm also reading more diligently. I'm halfway through "The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell.

Mitchell wrote the book "Cloud Atlas," which was made into a fair science fiction film, but was (not surprising) a thought-provoking book about identity, time and fate. It really worked for me and seemed to be taking the position that maybe, just maybe, the future can influence the past. 

I'm also trying to write more --that's part of the reason, I guess, the blog has suddenly creaked back to life, though I'm not going out of my way to promote it. There's no money in it, so why bother? I don't even know if people actually read these kinds of blogs anymore.

Still, the hope is if I can find enough energy to write here, maybe I can finish one of my other long-suffering projects, which seem to go on the back burner whenever the least, little thing arises to compete with them.

Anyway, it's a hope. Habits, I'm trying to create some new, good ones.