#7-Fight Aging

Tonight I was washing the dishes that had piled up in our dishwasher-challenged kitchen, and, without thinking, I placed a fragile ceramic bowl on a top of a pile of equally fragile drinking glasses in the sink. The result was a noisy avalanche of breakable dish-ware collapsing in on each other, followed by an outburst of expletives from my mouth. Our victim, a single water glass, was crushed into pieces--just like it's brother from last night. That's right: I broke two glasses in two days while washing dishes, a fact that wouldn't be so frustrating if my casualty rate was not so high. Over the past six months of living in this house and owning this glass set, I've managed to break 2/3 of the contents, usually while washing dishes with extremely soapy hands or from unintentionally crushing them under other dishes.

The reason I'm even dwelling on this small event is, for one, I'm going to have to buy a new dish set soon; but also because it illustrates my constant frustration with myself for getting stuck in certain lifestyle patterns that I find obnoxious, ineffective, or down-right debilitating. For example, I am rather unorganized with my things and my living space is rarely in an orderly state. I am cluttery and procrastinate on cleaning up (Confession: I haven't washed the outside of my car since I've bought it in August). I don't floss. The list of parts of my lifestyle that I am frustrated with yet never seem to change can go on and on, but the point is that I can't seem to break the habits. I either will attempt for a few days and get overwhelmed, or consider the odds of success that are stacked against me and quit with a little dignity intact.

I've heard from some personal and quickly-internet-researched* sources that my instinct to retreat from any attempts of changing my habits might be a little biological: it seems that at age 25, the human brain reaches it's peak weight at 1450g, and then slowly starts shrinking. After that, it starts to loose an average of 2g per year, and increases even more when an individual reaches their 80s. The reason I even did a half-ass attempted at googling this information is that my friend had mentioned to me one time that when adults hit 25, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to establish and integrate new habits into their lifestyles, due to the aforementioned brain shrinkage.

August 14, 2010 marked the 25th anniversary of birth, and apparently the dawn of a new era of ceasing brain development. I'm not sure if this shrinkage perspective is helpful for me to deter from being self-deprecating over my frustrating and annoying habits, or strikes in me a sense of impending doom over my apparent inability to change. In truth, I rest somewhere in the middle, so this year, in order to avoid inevitable death by brain shrinkage, I resolve to..

#7-Fight Aging, one habit (or lack thereof) at a time

Despite any research, I know that I have a healthy brain and am able enact and establish new routines that are enriching and beneficial to my lifestyle. However, the empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that I will have to do so with a little more work and intention than I was previously able to, back in the "good ol' days" of my teens and early 20s. Of all of the habits that I don't have that I would like to adopt is maintaining a more organized and orderly living space, in order to avoid the onset anxiety that occurs on occasion when I am surrounded by mess. Living inside of a task-oriented, money-making, busy lifestyle leaves little room for integrating any additional habits or rhythms, so it does feel a little daunting to try to meet this goal while still maintaining space and peace. I guess the best way that I can think of to approach this is to adopt a little philosophy that I heard from my yoga instructor called the "one-minute rule" (or something--I may have just made that name up): do it immediately if you can do it in under one minute. Sort of a proactive front-loading approach to a whole lifestyle overhaul.

What I like about this idea is that it focuses on the small: if I think about how my entire dresser is extremely unorganized and full of bunched up items of clothing, I feel a little debilitated by the greatness of the task. Thus, the dresser is forced to survive in the constant open-drawer, strewn-clothes way of life that it's been alloted. However, if I take one minute to fold a few shirts in one drawer here and there, then eventually the chaos will subside and the balance of my dresser restored. I won't necessarily get everything organized all at once with this approach, but I will successfully establish a new sustainable habit, even if means I'll be folding those clothes minute by minute well into my 80s. At this point, I'll take anything that promises a little more organization--maybe it will inspire me to finally sort through my moving bins and store them in the garage. I wish I was kidding about that.

*I do not propose that this article holds any scientific nor factual authority in and of itself, but its validity seems reasonable due to the peer-reviewed article that it cites. Also, my friend who told me about this is really smart and knows her stuff, so it must be true.