Andrea asked me a question back at the beginning of the month that I've thought a lot about:
Welcome to my blog, where I mostly natter on about my life with five kids. Occasionally (not very often, because teenagers keep a person humble) I dispense parenting advice. Occasionally I write about other things, like books. (Those are probably affiliate links in posts about books. If you click through and buy something, Amazon will pay me a little bit of money.) Or faith or food or my secret strategy for dealing with annoying kid behavior or whether I am fit to be a mother. Also: who is the mystery intruder? And: does stay-at-home mothering rot the brain?
If you are worried about slow weight gain in a breastfed baby, this is my most-viewed post — hope it's helpful to you. Want to read more? I have some favorite old posts linked here, or you can find my archives here.
Solid habits:
I have tried out and discarded a ton of different habits over the years. My stickiest habits are my prayer habits, which is both good and bad. On the one hand, good things happen if you just keep showing up. On the other, it's easy to go through the motions after many years of observing a habit. For better or for worse, I have worn a deep groove in my brain with this one. I don't start my morning without the Liturgy of the Hours (almost always accompanied by a chunk of the Bible, often topped off with a few pages of my current book on faith); I don't end the day without finishing the rosary.
Other good and reasonably consistent habits: ending the day with a chapter of Trollope, starting the dishwasher every evening and emptying it every morning, starting laundry early on Saturday and putting it away by Saturday evening, observing Sunday as a day free of both work-work and housework.
Habits I miss:
Habits I have abandoned:
Habits I am not thrilled about:
Gretchen Rubin's quiz identifies me as an Upholder, but I have definite Obliger tendencies. In recent years I have felt like less of an Upholder than I used to be, which is the result of a complicated bundle of factors. (A non-trivial contributor: for a while there I was sleeping poorly more often than not, which was terrible in a whole bunch of ways. My drive to do hard things is closely tied to my level of restedness.) Being an Upholder makes it easier to establish new habits, but also easier to be rigid about anything that gets labeled a habit.
Upshot: I'm glad I've learned to be less rigid, but sometimes I miss the 40-something version of me that had a zillion ideas about new things to try. It would be wise for me to invest some time and thought into updating my current habits, with the goals of diminishing internet drift, fitting in more exercise more consistently, and structuring my workdays more fruitfully.
Please tell me all about your habits, good and bad, and your Gretchen Rubin results, too!