Serious ructions loom over the “main” couch.
In just over a week, On The Couch will be mothballed, and the human element will try to take up permanent station in the middle.
There will be no more canine lounging all day, every day, watching the human earn their living ‒ retirement beckons.
It’s a Very Weird Time. Trepidation and excitement vie for ascendancy as we do the sums and try to plot the way ahead. As daunting as that is for someone with chronic dyscalculia, there is a larger challenge ahead ‒ changing 40-odd years of ingrained behaviours.
It’s more than a habit: work has driven just about every decision and action for decades. Now it’s time to undo it all.
As usual, the couch scientific research council has dug deep and found that “habit” breaking is obviously something of a thing. Professor Google has more than 81 million suggestions, none of which I found terribly helpful (although I confess to only reading about eight).
Mostly, I was interested in how long I would suffer the mental challenge of dismissing thoughts and ideas about stories, columns or pictures, of mulling how we could make a better, brighter newspaper. Of trying to come up with ways to help teams to be fulfilled, happy and find their best selves. Or worrying about people going through tough times. Or how I could do my work better.
It’s also time to tie myself loose from every social media thing I would never have signed up for in the first place if it wasn’t a work requirement ‒ this is going to be a celebration, but only once I decipher how to actually close an account. These clever mega-tech companies make it easy to sign up but super seriously difficult to shut down. Even gmails from a bloody tenacious florist and a couple of others. Since the retirement decision was made, I have unsubscribed to billions (sorta) of emails, yet some return over and over. I am wallowing in a sense of joy and anticipation of being freed from these invasive technologies.
But back to habits: it apparently takes between 18 to 254 days to break a habit and form a new one, which explains why my cigarette habit was only broken when I replaced it with a (and I don't care what anyone says) healthier “device” to feed my nicotine addiction. The satisfying smoke without the permanent wheeze and bronchitis. Only ex-smokers will know how long a day can be when you’re trying to quit, and a month seems like an eternity.
There are also theories that tackling an enormous task is best done bite-by-bite or step-by-step, so that is what we plan to do.
I will consider the first month a normal leave period. Alarms off, clocks un-batteried, and phone muted. After years spent struggling to find a digital bedside clock so I could tell if insomnia had struck at 1am or 4.30am and deciding whether to just get up then or try to go back to sleep, I unplugged it this week as a first step. In a week’s time, the phone will only be there for emergencies.
The terribly messy world can get on with things as the couch family butts butts to get that centre spot. Poverty for peace is a fair trade.
The Independent on Saturday