For the record: We are happy to report we survived the typhoon and that school was cancelled.

This month my goal is to hurt my daily opportunity to work on this blog.

I’ve written before about how I took part in a Monthly Challenge where participants were encouraged to adopt a new habit or drop an old one for one month and see what happens and how they feel. At the end of the month they decide if they are going to keep the habit.

In my case, I decided to try a consistent 11-5 sleeping schedule, even on weekends, which was a lot better than my four hour(ish) random sleeping schedule. To help accomplish this I also decided to stop drinking coffee after lunch.

After the month, I’ve found that with the more consistent sleep pattern I’ve had more energy and been more productive in the afternoon–especially at work when I have a free hour–and after work. (The exceptions are if I have a high-carb lunch, then I get sleepy for a while.) It also gives me time in the morning to exercise, do some writing and plan my day and I’ve found myself less grumpy at work (although the company I work for is trying to make up for that. Long story involving a typhoon and bovine scatalogical materials.)

Now that the 30 days are over, I’ve decided I’m going to keep the habit.

The problem is, now when I get home I’m still in my “damn I’m sleepy” after work schedule where I sit down in front of the computer and read news and generally waste time for a couple hours.

Lately, though, I’ve found myself much more restless during this time. Therefore, my goal this month is to eliminate the after work internet and focus on writing projects and more reading.

The problem with that is, after I’ve written a couple hours, I don’t have much energy left for these daily entries. (That happened this weekend when I spent the better part of each day writing.) Also, if I never turn on the internet, it’s kind of hard to write a post for it.

That means I’ll have to experiment with when to write these–which mean’s I’ll probably continue to start them at 10 p.m. or so Tokyo time and hope I don’t have as many typos as I usually have.

By the way, I encourage everyone to try to the Monthly Challenge. Try giving something up for a month. At the end of the month, you can change back or keep going.