What prompted me to write this was the usual recurring thought that came up: If I have ever changed in the past few (or 10) years or so. I’m constantly living and trying to get through each day that sometimes I forget I’m actually growing, changing, improving (or not), and most of all, learning.

In a little notepad the other night, I listed out the stuff I’ve outgrown hoping that I would be able to elaborate them in the form of a blog entry. It’s weird because as I am typing this, my heart is actually beating faster than usual. Anything that has to do with change is always an unsettling yet exciting feeling at the same time.

Binge-watching TV shows
I haven’t done this in such a long time that I even forgot the last time I did it. In fact, I’ve hardly watched any good tv shows the past year or two. I remember I could go 2-3 days marathoning shows and finishing a season in less than 48 hours. Now, I can’t even watch an hour-long TV show anymore. I’m not entirely sure what brought upon the thought-process of outgrowing this but it seems like I haven’t been watching American TV shows. This year I started taking on more than 2 jobs so I have less time to watch anything. I admit I do miss it, but can’t be bothered to catch up with everything anymore.

The need to know EVERYTHING
I remember 3 years ago when I could read through more than 1000 feeds on my Google Reader every day. I subscribed to EVERYTHING and tried to read them all. From music, to technology, entertainment, politics, sports, art, design, local news, Korean entertainment I had to KNOW IT ALL. I wanted to be up to date with everything and that even included watching TV shows. Now I just focus on what benefits me the most because aside from a maturing brain that can’t handle too much information, I realized I could do something more productive than trying to be updated with every little thing the world has to offer.

Pirating music
When I feel strongly about an artist or an album I always buy their music physically or digitally. For all other songs, there’s always “free” downloads. The minute Spotify pre-launched in the Philippines early last year, I immediately bought a subscription and my music downloading stopped. I even deleted my whole iTunes music library early this year and celebrated losing about ten thousand songs from my hard drive. My laptop breathed a little better too.

Pulling all-nighters
Who am I to say this, really? Here I am at 2:53AM, writing this blog post when I’ve been working from 9am to 12am the previous day. I have to be awake in about 6 hours for work #1 then get ready for work #2 after. But really, I value sleep much more now, and not just sleeping in during mornings.. but actually sleeping RIGHT. I used to pull all-nighters a lot because I didn’t want to miss anything (cue The need to know EVERYTHING as stated above) but now I keep it to a minimum, or none at all. It feels good to wake up knowing you had enough sleep.

There are quite a few more that I wanted to add but couldn’t find the right words to elaborate, like eating junk food, or drinking til’ you drop (which I think I probably will still do provided my health stats are great). Even though all these didn’t necessarily happen this year, but in retrospect, the realization itself has been good for self-improvement.