This is just the article I needed to get my new year goals back in view!
The unfortunate truth is that we are lazy by nature, where we will consistently take the easiest path forward, the road perceived as requiring the smallest amount of effort.
I've operated from this mindset for so long, trying to minimize my responsibilities to the point where I have very little to be accountable for each day. But it also means I have little reason to live for also, and I do not like being so disassociated from everything.
even when we know we should be doing something else. And the "nothing" most of us are mostly doing, feels like we are doing something, like scrolling a feed, or watching something on a streaming service. This makes it hard to compete with.
The nothing I have to compete eith every day is Splinterlands. Devoting my time to this game is my present version of doom scrolling. Sure I'm making some rewards and I show more accumulation every Season, but the time I spent with Splinterlands is keeping me back from advancing my life in other areas. Well, that and all the cannabis I'm smoking.
we aren't walking more, nor are we using them to improve our physical wellbeing.
Well, at least here I can give some thanks to @actifit here on Hive and the FitBit I've been using over the past 18 months. I do enjoy the gamifications of tracking my steps. I still don't remember to do it every day to ppst through actifit, but I do try and hit that 10K steps goal daily. It is much easier when I'm at work as a teacher, since I typically hit that mark with all the work I do bopping around my classroom and taking the students up and down 4 flights of stairs a few times a day. I made it right into the actifit Top100 for 2025 with over 2M steps logged!
The "build it and they will come" mentality is no longer enough to just create the space, because it also requires the incentives for the space to be used.
I had a partner, the beloved Dr. Jane Hurley, who studied exactly this problem for her doctorate. She was looking into which incentives provided the best "bang for the buck" to get people at low activity levels to medium activity levels. She hated cars, but love riding bikes and taking public transportation. Cruelly she was killed as a pedestrian in a car crash back in June 2019 just a month after defending her dissertation and only 3 days after signing her first job contract to work for a Top3 think tank in urban planning. Humanity would be better off if she was still around. I'm sure wherever she is now, she is smiling that you are writing an article about her field of study and passion!
This is where kids have played a role in life earlier - because it is automatic responsibility and activity.
What else do you want to do?
That is awesome. Do you find yourself pushing for a few more each day?
By the sounds of things, for sure. I wish I had had the chance to have a decent conversation with her and perhaps get a small amount of influence into her planning future. We need more people who think enough to actually get people changing for the better, rather than making them change to increase profits.
Maybe I'm against the commitment level of children, but I could definitely do better with a bit more responsibility and discipline. Which rolls into point #3...
I need to do more with the pushing and the pulling + a more nutritious whole-food diet during my hectic school days! It not so much the steps because I've always had that soccer-style endurance, but I need more horsepower!
For point 2, I need to learn the tech skills behind streaming and editing. I used to edit for TV for a living, but the technical aspects the past 10 years have kept me off Twitch/YT/3peak. If I want to get serious about building my brand and getting out of USA, it is time I learned this stuff yesterday and get to it.
So far, I can't even keep the consistency of actifit posts but somehow I want to build a personal brand? I need a more strategic plan cuz I'm just grapsing at straws at the moment, grabbing onto whatever feels good.
It would be nice to have quite a few different convos with Jane about how things are going in this world. She would have been fighting like hell against this state of affairs and putting in the work to create the future she wanted. Miss her all the time. We are all worse off without her around anymore.
Yeah, I get that. More the point that having children makes the responsibility default. Without them, we seem to lack defaults so have to find responsibility. The community is the target.
So many ways to start getting into this with a low bar - just do it!
It is such a compelling way to live, but I think it is ultimately unrewarding as it leaves us feeling empty. That might just be me though.
She would have been fighting like hell against this state of affairs and putting in the work to create the future she wanted.
Often the people we need, seem to be the ones taken first.
Like my Nikes are talking to me. So you are saying I should stop making excuses ehh?