In a way new year is just a logical barrier. But it helps us to reset and restart few things.
From where I am, I see the new year to be a very long, strong road. Its empty throughout December. It looks like a manless national highway.
Generally I start working on new year resolutions 2 months before only so that I know what works and what does not work.
These are the things I did "just like that":
1. Arrest coffee addiction
2. Arrest newspaper addiction
3. Arrest TV watching tendency
What's the significance?
1. Coffee addiction: This is significant because my teeth were getting yellow. Just kidding. I started
http://Gcoffee.blogspot.com and named it so because I loved Coffee. Coffee meant a lot of things to me: a great start, a good companion, a celebration of success. Drinking coffee was a great ritual to me. I wanted to break this, because it became an addiction. I derived a new value for myself that I should never allow anything to bind me. I instantly declared to my family (who mocked me for having done similar attempts in the past) and am sticking to not-having-coffee. I replaced coffee with Green Tea. I started becoming obsessed with different flavours of Green Tea. But never an addiction. At office, I take randomly coffee (yes!), tea and green tea. Because winter is here! But there were days, I don't take any of these.
What did I do next? I carried this momentum to the next one.
2. Newspaper addiction: TOI is biggest addiction. I have tried few times to stop getting TOI (I think I would have blogged about it in the past) but I love their format. Its so addictive, you get glued to the news, even if its not important. It reached a threshold when they give too much importance on the page 1 on a Bangalore adultery-cum-murder story and one more murder story. They were a very detailed coverage that I felt enough is enough. I applied the stop-coffee-addiction momentum to TOI and replaced it with The Hindu. Hindu also covers bad news on pg 1, but with their basic format, who cares? Sometimes, I try to recollect what I read as a headline!
Having got 2 de-addictions, I sometimes felt my limbs were removed (ha..ha). But it helped!
3. TV watching: This is just a light one. I don't watch TV generally so much. But that I return home late and start watching the music shows for an hour. Kids don't get my time and attention. Though its a 30 minute time, I sacrificed it. Weekends, sometimes I don't even turn off the TV.
De-addiction is almost like de-toxification. I am feeling free.
Now I know, my mind is templatized for de-addicting anything:
Weeds are automatic! They need to be removed first, before you plant anything new.
I am glad I made good progress and commitment in the last 2 months or so.
