Creature of habit

I have some strange habits.  I’m not complaining.  They help me get things done.

I credit my odd habits with my routine, and I credit my routine with keeping me 82% sane.  I’m, sadly, only 82% sane right now because I’m marathon training and anyone who claims “sanity & marathon training” go together like “peanut butter and jelly” is a liar.

The habit I enjoy the most is that I get up at 4something in the morning, stumble down stairs in fog, blinking heavily.  I eat a little piece of banana, drink some water, and hang out in my kitchen with my text books and e-mail for a bit while I wake up.  Then I go for a run.

~savor~

On rest days, I have a habit of getting up at 4something in the morning, eating a little, brewing some coffee and being in love with my biology or nursing or statistics text book until the kids get up.  Ok, love is a strong word here.

How about this one:  “Let me sit back and consider if I’m really hungry before I eat”.  Yes.  It’s a habit I worked hard to develop.  It’s taken a while to become second nature.  Today I found myself bored at one point (sitting at computer doing 45 statistics problems – you’d have been bored too) and contemplated grazing. 

Duh, WWBS?  *What would Brooke Say?  “Are you hungry?  No.  Then git your sorry southern a** out of the pantry”.  I love Brooke’s accent.  She’s Texan.  Pinch me.

Of course, despite the fact that I’m FREAKING AWESOME, I’m not perfect, and some of my habits are a fail. 

I often stop to log food into food journal, pop over to Facebook, take a look….  Or worse.  E-mail.  I get 30 e-mails a day from people I’d like to communicate with… (I have to clarify that because I probably get 843 e-mails a day from people requesting money be wire transferred, or suggesting that my (equipment) could stand to be larger, harder and better). 

I can lose an hour reading, and replying in support, encouragement, need, love, or conversation with the people I support, love, need and converse with on a daily basis.  I have dedicated time for e-mail.  The bad habit is allowing myself to get sucked in past that time.  Admittedly “certain people” have the addy that goes straight to the DROID… and thus, there are no hours of operation. 

I have the bad bad habit of checking that e-mail way too often.  if you have that addy you know this first hand.

Still, keeping a detailed food journal takes some time.  Keeping up with 3 kids takes a chunk of time.  Homework and class time takes about 40 hours a week at this point, that e-mail “habit” as bad as it is can kill hours in my day, and, then, you have what my husband considers my worst offender: my running habit.  

That one takes … well, as much time as it takes.

So, I guess it’s not surprising that I get the following question ALL the time:

“How do you FIT IT ALL IN???”

How do I … ?  What?  Please people. 

If it’s important to you, you’ll fit it in and make it part of your routine. 

If you love it (i.e. – Running, riding or “heroin use” in general), you’ll fit it in. 

If you hate it but it has to be done (i.e. – Planks, Statistics homework) you’ll STILL fit it in.

Even if that means you have to develop a habit that allows you to read e-mail, do planks, go running, and do homework at 4:29am, 7 days a week.

Of course, on the running days, it’s easier to break out of the fog by 4:45, but that’s just coz I love that ‘habit’ a bit more than homework.  And that habit this year has lead to a whopping 855 miles to date.  Considering I took a month off of running *fankle, that number seems pretty significant.

~savor the run~