Obvious Word Connections: Atom & Atomic

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

Well, my second week of attempting to wake up at 6:15 is off to a great start, with me not waking up until 6:35 on Monday. Honestly, the biggest problem is my going to bed hours. I don't usually get to bed until after midnight. That was fine when I didn't have to wake up at a specific time. But now that I have to wake up at 6:15 to get my personal writing done, it's not a great habit. 

I recently started reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. Soon, I'll learn how to break bad habits, and hopefully, that will help. I end up playing games on my phone till all hours of the night, which is why I don’t get to sleep early enough. 

I'm contemplating deleting the game I picked up most recently. We'll see if I follow through on that. I have a couple that I don't mind playing because they don't have a strong emotional impact on me, and I don't waste several hours a day on them. So I should just delete the most recent acquisition. 

What Does That Even Mean?!

The first thing I’ve learned from Atomic Habits is that I don't actually know what atomic means. The context I have for atomic is the stories I heard about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII. Theoretically, I know that an atom is extremely tiny from grade school science. But, since the atomic bombs caused such vast amounts of damage, I hadn't connected atomic and atom in my brain. 

Atomic, in my mind, was a giant disaster causing monumental death and destruction. Unforgivable. An atom is a teeny tiny element of molecules that make up cells, with no moral merit. There was no connection there besides the self-explanatory one that my brain chose to ignore.

Now that I understand that atoms and atomic are related, the book makes a lot more sense. It's a good thing he starts it off with definitions, just in case I'm not the only one who hasn't figured that out yet. 

I've learned a ton from the book. It’s a fascinating dive into human psychology. It feels different from other self-help books in that it’s not full of gaslight-y con-spirituality. It has what seems t be practical advice and logical explanations for the things we do. 

I'm excited to keep reading it and see if I can use the knowledge and techniques in my own life. 

I think implementing solid habits in my life will be crucial to learning to live with ADHD. It will also be more complicated than it should be to build new habits because of ADHD. But hopefully, the breakdown in the book will be useful for me too. 

While I'm working at this temp job, I hope I can also get myself back in the habit of walking my dog every day, as well. Neither of us benefits from the fact that I don't leave the property some days. My mental health is so much better when I walk regularly. Fingers crossed, we can use this time to get back into some more positive habits.