I didn’t realize that my last post never went into the “habits” portion of that title. So much so that I forgot that the title even alluded to the plan. Whoops.

Anywho, once upon a time I ate oranges every day. One a day, usually, if it was something the size of a naval orange, two or three if it was more like a clementine. We’d get a bag of them from the fresh produce area and I’d have no trouble finishing them off while they were still good.

Now…? I don’t rightly remember if it was heartburn or if it’s one of many foods that suffered when I killed my appetite a few years ago and struggled to make myself eat much of anything, but I tend to forget to eat them. I can still go out and buy that bag–I prefer clementines and similar which are almost never available singly–but once they go in the fridge I kind of… forget I have them. I have two that have been rolling around for a week in the cooler I take to work, sometimes I remember to eat one or two at home, but I have to remind myself they’re an option so I can eat them before they go bad. Certainly doesn’t help when they get buried by whatever the rest of the household buys; out of sight, out of mind, yaknow?

The point being, while eating healthy has never really been the habit it should have been, it was a habit… and one I need work on reclaiming and improving. Fresh produce is better when I can get it but sealed fruits are convenient enough to pack in lunches as well; I’m especially partial to pineapple chunks.

And as always there’s the need to get back in the habit of exercising on a regular basis, whether it’s playing the likes of Beat Saber before bed or Zombies Run on my days off, or just hopping on the treadmill while watching TV.

But that’s not the only healthy habit I need to work on. I told my coworkers after a ton of stuff went down on clearance lately that if there was a god of splurging, that deity was laughing at me. None of my recent purchases were impulse, per se–unless one counts the impulse of “buy it now before it sells out so I’m not stuck paying full price elsewhere” overriding the desire to see if it drops lower–it was all stuff I needed, but it was also all a lot of spending in a short span of time.

Case in point, buying a new computer last month via the Walmart+ week (and buying one for my dad during the same sale–he paid me back but it’s still money on my credit card until the bill gets paid), followed by buying a 5 terabyte hard drive that went on clearance, and then, after deciding the same day I bought the hard drive that there were no other high-ticket items on clearance that I needed to buy… only after making that declaration did I notice that my store had also put the GoPro Hero 9 on clearance.

*headdesk* Yeah, habit is “stop spending money.” I have a couple of higher-interest savings in the form of both Paypal (4.3 percent) and ONE (5 percent) in addition to the credit union that serves as a local convenience, but regardless of location one of my goals is to get one of those balances up to about $5000 without carrying a balance on a single credit card.

And finally the perpetual habit that is decluttering:

I’d kept putting off turning in my Hero 5 for GoPro’s replacement policy due to a non-working charging port, but my biggest hang-up has always been that I’ll not only get another 5 in return but it’ll be a refurbished one… no guarantee I won’t have similar issues sooner rather than later.

A new 9, on the other hand, translates to a newer model–still no guarantee I won’t need to use the replacement plan down the line or that a refurbished one won’t have issues, but as it’s the same model as the one on my bike, there at least won’t be any accidentally plugging in the wrong battery pack overnight when my parents and I are going for a ride the next morning. Thank goodness for the Volta charger the last time I did that, I started the ride with a 26 percent internal battery and recorded for a couple of hours without it ever dropping.

With this purchase I can start getting rid of some of my extra stuff–like the Hero 5 battery pack–and better organize the accessories I can keep. I’ll also eventually want to start going through my memory cards and getting rid of the ones that are so small in capacity that I have no more use for them and/or replace some of the older ones… everything’s got a lifespan, after all.

Speaking of lifespans, that 5 terabyte drive is more a work in progress. It did not come with its own software for auto-updates, the app that came with my Seagate doesn’t acknowledge its existence (not unexpected since the new one is Western Digital, but still disappointing), and I’m not keen on the idea of software with a limited license that doesn’t even last as long as the drive does. So I’m on the lookout for software that will automatically back things up for me versus having to do it manually.

In the meantime, there’s also the matter of reorganizing the contents of each drive. I eventually want the new 5 to hold the daily backups, the older 4 to contain whatever social media content I’ve finished editing and uploading (barring the hypothetical possibility of losing accounts, I’ve yet to have any need to repurpose old photos and videos so even this merely functions as a backup)… and the unedited stuff to all stay on my computer where it will be caught up in the “daily backup” sweep. The problem is that my unedited GoPro videos alone are over a full terabyte… and the computer’s hard drive is only a single terabyte….

So final (for now) habit to reclaim…? Stop procrastinating and start editing and uploading.