Breaking the habit

Breaking the habit
Originally uploaded by dckatastrophe

I'm desperately trying to break some bad habits. I should prolly follow through and stop biting my nails, but I think attaining a level of personal enlightenment should allow you some faults. I think biting my nails and sometimes admitting out loud that I think Kathy Griffin is funny are two faults worth tackling a little bit later.

I've tried all sorts of new-age, hippie fault-fixing shit, but it doesn't really work for me.

I can't all of a sudden relax my body in a systematic way and dream that I'm at the beach and can hear the roar of the ocean as I sync my pulse with mother nature.

I can't sit still and imagine a room, where I visualize myself putting awful situations my brain conjured up in the cabinets and closets of my mind and then visualize locking them up.

I can't sit around and think about bad habits and take the time to go "hmmm... self. How will you feel about these choices later?".

I can't even stand googling HOW to break bad habits, scouring 43 things hoping that someone else like me might have asked Metafilter the secret to unlocking a similarly flawless existence.

Some bad habits make you realize that some people, when it comes down to it, like to suffer. Why else do we bite our nails down to the quick? Smoke a pack a day? Binge drink?

Part of the allure is the pain that follows. The inability to type any words involving "a" because your pinkie is bleeding. Silently enjoy your coughing spells. Smiling through your hangover.

I am therefore trying the age-old method of stopping a nasty habit. Every time I catch myself, I snap 5 rubber bands on my wrist.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not snapping the hell out of them. I'm not crying and smiling through it. It's something to take me out of my head and back to reality. It's something to remind me of how many times without even MEANING TO, I lead myself down a terrible path that takes a little while for missteps to be identified.

Also, I've just now gotten the short-hair fetish site guys to stop looking at my blog, so I'm in no rush to get the naughty rubber band fetish (hello! gum bands to you Brits!) underbelly of the interwebs interested in me trying to engage in a little head game against my head game.

Let me tell you, your brain learns things fast when you aren't allowed to float through life being that indulgent to its every whim.

The first day of my rubber band exercise last week I snapped them 31 times from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed. THIRTY-ONE times where I CAUGHT myself. Think of all the times I didn't realize I was even engaging in the fault! Think of when I felt JUSTIFIED in faulty behavior! Think of when I forgot to snap my rubber bands!

Today it was three.

And that, my friends, is progress.