Monotony and Affirmations
Last week, I managed to re-set up my website at my new place. I had to re-do the whole server and router setup which took about a month, but it was far easier the second time around gladly. Finishing this time-sink has allowed me to re-evaluate myself and make a series of realisations that I'm sure I should've figured out years ago.
I have been getting used to working a full-time job for the first time in my life - excluding a six week placement that I had in mid-summer. This has taken the form of fighting against the natural reaction to become over-reliant on, maybe not unhealthy, but simple comforts. The flexibility that university provided allowed me to take part in different hobbies and cook a variety of interesting foods. I found myself at exam-periods often forcing myself to make different, interesting meals against my every wish to eat something monotonous and easy. The same type of desire for ease has resurfaced since starting this job, which I can't blame myself for.
Throughout this month I have reached a consensus on how I want to navigate this, especially because this was no longer a temporary issue anymore. Washing dishes, I took time to reflect on what I had learned within the week, what I wanted to get done in my next week, and how I would manage this. This absent-minded task suddenly took on a new role, as a time to mull over things, which I have usually avoided due to thought-spirals that haunted me since early adolescence - however, the state I am in now is more accepting to this positive self-analysis. By chasing novelty, I had managed to avoid the benefits that monotony can be engineered to offer; It was a way of filling up my day with new experiences to prevent myself from reflecting.
Another development I considered recently was the role of self-affirmations; These are becoming increasingly popular, and anyone can benefit from them. I was reading The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, and although I disagreed with the self-centred, hyper-individualist viewpoint I felt was pushed later on in the book - and by many other self-help books, it mentioned "The Power of The Word". Looking at this from a humanist perspective rather than a spiritual one, it reinforced to myself the power of my spoken and unspoken word to influence myself and others.
For example, in 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' by Philip K. Dick a character named John Isidore is labelled as a "Chickenhead" because of his low score in an IQ test, and is actually remarkably functional once demanded to make a video-call at work, which he previously viewed himself as too stupid to undertake. A poor self-perception in ability to do a task can even impact functioning and leads to worse performance than those who had been affirmed that they have the capability to act. This was a significant issue for myself, as I noticed that I was telling everyone that I was a "bad driver" or an "anxious pharmacist" and was essentially willing these poor attributes into existence. Since assuring myself and others that I was a good driver or a calm and co-ordinated pharmacist, my attempts to improve began to pay off. A lack of action and reflection were not my downfall, it was my view of my own incompetence which was.
This week I have also reduced my caffeine intake for consultations and driving, as I found that I was decreasing the threshold for myself becoming flustered and anxious with the single cup of coffee I was enjoying in the morning. Changing the drink to tea instead has made myself a lot more functional. Everything is pharmacokinetics, no matter how much we would like to believe it is not. If you, reading this, have a regular intake of a drug of any kind, think about what the dosing is doing to your functioning. Alcohol and caffeine both delay/reduce REM sleep which prevents people from feeling well-rested the next day - and in relatively small quantities too.
This week's pharmaceutical fact: Methenamine, used for prevention of recurrent UTIs, works by an acid-catalysed hydrolysis reaction in the bladder, which turns methenamine into formaldehyde (an antiseptic). It is commonly complexed with an acid to encourage acidification of the urine to aid its functioning, however, it may also be taken alongside vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) to acidify the urine further and ideally speed this reaction up. There is uncertainty whether this actually makes a clinical difference, but it has sound theoretical basis and isn't harmful. Vitamin C also plays a role in collagen development amongst other essential biological functions, and has been shown to have a mixed anti-oxidant / pro-oxidant (in cancers), with an overall protective effect.