{"id":6949,"date":"2026-03-04T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=6949"},"modified":"2026-03-02T19:46:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T02:46:29","slug":"re-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2026\/03\/re-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"Re -Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"Ah, but a man\u2019s reach should exceed his grasp,<br \/><br \/>Or what\u2019s a heaven for?<br \/><br \/>Robert Browning<br \/><br \/>I\u2019ve had three years of learning to live with impairment. Those were years of breaking old habits and picking up new ones. <br \/><br \/>Like a teenager that can\u2019t drive, I narrowed my horizons significantly.<br \/><br \/>Three years to break habits of a lifetime.<br \/><br \/>Is that how it works?<br \/><br \/>I think what I did is make new habits. Habits of distracting myself as I marked time.<br \/><br \/>Last week I said I didn\u2019t recognize myself I remembered the person I used to be, doing the things TODAY that I once did years ago.<br \/><br \/>Times do change. That kid gets a license and starts to see what\u2019s out there.<br \/><br \/>Or things that were once required get simpler.<br \/><br \/>Or new distractions dominate my view.<br \/><br \/>Where\u2019s my jetpack? Wasn\u2019t it all supposed to be done by robots now?<br \/><br \/>I\u2019ve picked up a book \u201cindistractible\u201d which discusses how to focus again.<br \/><br \/>Those little jokes and funny memes are the snack food of the mind. <br \/><br \/>I\u2019m grown and I know how much I will can\u2019t resist certain snacks, and I won\u2019t even let them in the house. <br \/><br \/>These new habits are starting to smell the same.<br \/><br \/>My life was different four years ago. A lot changed. <br \/><br \/>The world changed too.<br \/><br \/>Same song <br \/><br \/>Second verse<br \/><br \/>A little bit louder and a little bit worse<br \/><br \/>Indistractible points out that our time spent on these entertaining mindsnacks is a way of avoiding boredom, also known as pain.<br \/><br \/>During the cancer treatments I fostered distraction from pain. <br \/><br \/>Here on the other side, I shake my head like a dog out of the bath. <br \/><br \/>I don\u2019t want to avoid pain. <br \/><br \/>There is reward on the other side.<br \/><br \/> In principle, anyway.<br \/><br \/>It is up to me to work the principles out in practice.<br \/><br \/>Practices from the cancer years are still useful now:<br \/><br \/>What can I reach for? What is possible today?<br \/><br \/><br \/><br \/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ah, but a man\u2019s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what\u2019s a heaven for? Robert Browning I\u2019ve had three years of learning to live with impairment. Those were years of breaking old habits and picking up new ones. Like a &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2026\/03\/re-habit\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6957,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949\/revisions\/6957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}