Sunday Ramble: Habits and Routines

Posted on by Astrid

Hello all on this beautiful Easter Sunday! Today, I’m joining the Sunday Ramble, for which the topic this week is habits and routines. Here are Amy’s questions.

1. Do you have a daily routine that you are used to, or do you just go with the flow of the new day?
I usually get up and go to bed around the same time. I also eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time most days. However, with respect to the activities I do inbetween, I usually go with the flow. After all, I just don’t always fancy doing the same things each day, don’t have the same level of energy, etc.

2. Do you do anything in your life habitually that you wish you could stop?
I guess I have quite a few bad habits. I’m learning not to overeat, but I still eat much faster than I’d like.

I also bite my nails. I tried to stop when I first started working with polymer clay, thinking that I could ingest polymer clay that got stuck under my nails by biting my nails. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop.

I also twirl my hair, which my autism diagnosing psychologist once told me was a “serious social handicap”. Well, I was just beginning to recover from a psychiatric crisis at the time, so I couldn’t care less.

3. If habit was the acronym H.A.B.I.T, what would it be short for?
Helpful Actions Bring Infinite Thankfulness.
That’s a way of turning HABIT into something good!

4. Are we born with our bad habits? Or do we acquire them from the environment surrounding us?
I think, like most of our traits, it’s a combination of both. We are born with a predisposition to, for example, nervousness, addiction, etc. However, the exact nature of our bad habits and whether they make it into actual compulsions/addictions/etc. or not, is largely determined by our environment.

5. Are you a night owl, early bird, or something else when it comes to sleeping routines?
I am naturally more of a night owl, but I also need a lot of sleep. I’ve gotten used to going to bed at around 10:30PM and getting up at 8:30AM. That probably makes me something in between.

Organization as a Self-Care Skill #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day 15 and my letter O post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today’s topic may seem a bit boring. I’m going to talk about how organizing your life can help you take better care of yourself.

Let me start by saying I’m a terrible organizer. In high school, I had a calendar that I’d typed out myself in Word. I started out keeping it faithfully at the beginning of the first school year. By the time we got to the end of that year though, I forgot to write down my homework about half the time and looked it up even less. I had a great memory, which meant I didn’t usually miss homework deadlines.

I never kept a calendar in college or beyond, but now that I have an iPhone, I do try to use the calendar app to track appointments. Which reminds me, I still need to write next week’s phone appt with my community psychiatric nurse into it. Going to do that now. Be right back.

Okay, done. Where was I? See, I’m pretty disorganized. Still, I try to keep some order in my life. It helps me, for example, to have reminders about taking my medication in my phone. Otherwise I may forget and that’s not good.

I also, like I mentioned before, have an app that reminds me to drink enough water. Habit-tracking apps like this exist for a bunch of habits that will help you have a more meaningful, organized and productive life.

Decluttering is another way of getting more organized. There are lots of specific methods for it, such as FlyLady, the Konmari method, etc. I would love to stick to such a method, but honestly more so that I could talk about it than to actually get cleaning. I guess that’s weird.

Because I am blind, I don’t usually get bothered by clutter unless it’s in my way. However, of course, clutter does make it harder for me to remember where I left my things. That’s why currently I try to keep at least some order in my drawers and my wardrobe. It’s hard, but it pays off.

Are you an organized person? Or have you developed strategies for organizing your life?

Five of My Bookish Habits

Posted on by Astrid

I’m once again joining in with Top 5 Tuesday. This week, the topic is bookish habits. Some of these are probably rather common, but some might not be.

1. I tend to read multiple books at a time. It’s rare that I finish a book before another one captures my interest, so I usually have at least three books I’m in the process of reading at the same time.

2. I almost exclusively read eBooks. Okay, so to those who know me, this may be obvious. I am blind and Braille books are extremely clunky. Then again, I hardly ever listen to audiobooks either. The reason is my poor English listening skills. Oh yeah, I hardly ever read books in any language other than English. This may seem obvious to those who don’t know me, since then you might not know that Dutch is my native language. I don’t seem to like Dutch books though.

3. I can’t do anything else while reading. Can’t listen to music or have the TV on or the like. I’m trying to train myself to listen to whale sounds or other white noise while reading. Otherwise I’m unable to read at day activities and I’d love to be able to do that.

4. I’m a true book collector. Especially now that I am a Bookshare (U.S.-based accessible book service) member, I download a lot more books than I actually read. I mean, when I was younger, my parents or later I myself would have to manualy scan print books for me, so I had an incentive to read all books on my shelf. Now I have a ton of textbooks and self-help books I only ever page through. My fiction bookshelf also has a lot on it I haven’t read. Conversely though, my Goodreads TBR list is rather short. The reason is I hardly use Goodreads.

5. I’m obsessed with checking book length and my progress percentage once I decide to read a book. I’m a slow reader, so I often want to know if I’m progressing nicely.

What are some of your bookish habits?