Day 25 of writing every day.
I called my gaming an addiction in yesterday’s post and it’s a fact I need to be honest about to change my situation. Atomic Habits tells about the strategy of making something unattractive to get rid of it. That could be as simple as making a list of all the things you lose because of it.
I remember basically dropping gaming from my routine in high school when I wanted to focus on running and ended up getting the slimmest I’d ever been in my life.
At that point in my life I’d been pretty hooked on games and it’d be what I’d do in my free time once I sped my way through homework that provided no real challenge. Games offered an escape and never-ending problems that could be solved or at least mitigated in an entertaining way. I could make choices and be in a role that reality didn’t offer me as a teen.
Moving beyond the goal and setting up a sustainable system
When I accepted that no matter how hard I trained and tried to improve my diet, I’d still never get faster than my peers who were born with slimmer, more efficient body types for running, some part of me decided to give up. I still enjoyed running with a group, but that was all. I’d still come to practice and try to improve my own time, but being on varsity or even making it to the top of JV through hard work was an impossible dream to achieve in my youth.
By the time I officially enrolled as a full-time student in college, I had already started regaining some of the weight I managed to cut off when I was focused on trying to make the cut for the varsity team in high school.
Looking for new things to do, I happened to join the regatta club and despite being an excruciatingly intensive sport, I was not able to lose weight because I ate like every other college student and was not completely immune to the freshman fifteen, a term used to refer to the weight many students gain after graduating high school and entering college.
The student from a stereotypical atomic family would be eating meals prepared at home or nutritionally balanced at school while in high school, but once in college, it’s whatever they want, and large quantities of junk food and alcohol are always easy to get.
Even college itself serves as another example where the key to success is not the goal but the system in place. Most high schools have a rigid system that began in elementary school where the day starts in the morning and bells signal the beginning and end of class, lunch, recess. All the while teachers are a constant presence and each grade is grouped in such a way that there is a feel of a school community such as the use of homerooms.
When you’re in college, you either commute or live on or close to campus. There will be orientation to help you find your way around and show you what learning resources are available, but after that you’re responsible for everything.
Students that were successful through primary and secondary school might find themselves struggling in college and I myself felt like I did mediocre for quite a while despite getting A’s most of the time in high school on my own without the help of friends or tutors.
With the sudden freedom and lack of structure in college, I picked up bad habits that I once ditched in favor of instant rewards all the while telling myself I was making the most of college by packing in more credits a semester than the average minimum for students that hope to get their bachelor’s degree in 4 years.
I still carry some of them with me today despite years of living by myself and I’ll reflect more on it another time.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 