User blog:Taldin/Reflections on a Habitual Habitician

(The slightly overdue post about Year two.)

I've always needed this game; I just didn't know it.

The human mind is about how we deal with being challenged. It's about whether we want to be challenged or whether we want to do things the easy way. Our status in society is built on results, and whether we do better (or are percieved as better) than our peers.

But people aren't all identical and equal. We have our strengths and weaknesses. Our moments of indecision, depression, frustration, and failure to control ourselves.

It's what being human is -- to be imperfect, and how we rise above that imperfection (or choose not to) is what sets each of us apart from each other.

I think at this point, having just hit 100 for the second time, I know how to play the game; how to game the system a little bit, and I've gotten so many pets I don't really keep track anymore. It's definitely 'sophomore slump' time; I have my Habits set, my Dailies are the ones I follow more or less religiously and serve as reminders of things I ought to do every so often, but I haven't needed to add new Dailies for the better part of a year.

Around November is the big flurry, for NaNoWriMo Plot Ninjas and Dares To-Do Challenge; every day I put up a new prompt for my fellow novelists.

Other than that? I've got my routine. I do need to get back into editing the Wiki a bit more, and there's more coding to be done, but I'm in the middle of my quarterly release cycle and a lot of things are going critical path. Again.

I've liked being one of the Wiki Admins; it's been one of the highlights of the past year. I've also appreciated the large influx of very talented writers we've added in this past year - it's meant I've been able to take another step back from feeling the compulsive need to 'fix things' like I had (it was impacting my work a bit) last year at this time.

I have to ask myself, though, 'what am I still doing here? Is it a Habit to be here?'   I'd say that if things were left the way they are, then yes. I could probably get by with this amount of effort and be fine for another year; but that always leaves me feeling like I could be doing more, silly as it might seem. (Y'all are doing a really great job of making it hard to find meaningful edits.)

I'm going through a rough patch in my life right now; have been for most of last year. Having the distraction is a good thing -- it keeps me sane -- but a bad thing -- it kinda distracts me from other things I could be -- should be doing. Checking off Dailies at the end of the day is easy. So is forgetting to do them before I fall over, too.

I want to do more. I want to be more. I just... don't have the 'raaaaahr' fire drive that I had a couple of years ago. I need to manage my time better, and I need to manage my life better.

Among other things, I think Habitica helps me keep control of my life as much as I can, but even I've started slipping a bit in that department, too.

Habitica has been my reason to Get Things Done. But it's only as effective as I make it, and I've been exhausted enough most days that I'm ready for bed at midnight, rather than 2am like I used to be able to do. (I get some of my best stuff done leading into the hour of the wolf....)

So yeah. I'm not going anywhere; just being a little more quiet than I used to be.

I want this to change. I just... there are things that are external stresses that aren't going away anytime soon....

Starting year three on a low note means that the only way I can go is up. *nod*

Taldin (talk) 19:33, April 14, 2016 (UTC)