Health Month

I began playing Health Month back in October.  The whole idea is to make healthy living into a social game.  In some ways, it's kind of dorky -- I almost quit back in November, then Tammy signed up for December and asked for help.  I couldn't turn my back on her, could I?  No.  So, I reluctantly signed up for the game in December.  Just to keep Tammy company.  But something funny happened.  Health Month was working for me in small ways -- minuscule ways, really.  But minuscule is better than none.

I haven't tackled big goals or big rules yet.  I've done extreme rules -- read every day, floss every day, but those are things that I either want to do, aren't hard to do, or both.  But, really, anything can be easy if you break it down into a small enough task, can't it?

The same guy who developed 750words.com developed Health Month.  Yes, he wants to make money at it.  After about four months at 750words.com, I decided to support him financially but sending him a couple years of patronage -- I don't like paying things in nitnoid ways anymore unless I have to.  I plan to use the site for a couple of years.  I get personal value from it.  You want this much per month?  OK.  We're good for a couple years now.  I can play.

The free game for Health Month allows a player three rules per month.  That's what I've been playing since October -- three rules per month.  If you're interested, you can see which ones on my profile here.
 I choose my rules carefully each month.  I want them to make a difference, and I want to succeed in following them.  The hardest one?  Think of one little thing I could do to improve my health each day.  I didn't even have to do it -- just think of it.  For the first ten days or so, it was pretty easy.  Then it got downright difficult.

You'll notice I came back to a couple of the rules after not doing them for a month.  That's because I thought I had the habit down, but when I wasn't tracking it, I wasn't doing as well as I wanted to be doing.  So I put the rule back in for the next couple of months.  I'm not tracking it formally this month, but I'm doing it.  I have a little program on the iPad where I can check things off, but I find myself doing the habit, so studious attention for three months seems to have an impact.  I thought that was interesting.  Your mileage may vary, but I'm going to see if that holds true for other things I want to do regularly.

I haven't decided if I want to financially support Health Month yet.  I almost committed to it, but I'm holding off for at least another month.  But one feature he's added that makes it better for me is the option to only see the people you're following on the game wall -- when the only option was to see everyone, the game wall became meaningless to me.  What that means to us is, if anyone else wants to play, if we follow each other on the game, even the free game, we can cheer one another like a team without having to pay the money or get the sponsorship to form a team.

Sign up for March is underway.  If anyone wants to play, I'll be there to cheer you on -- either let me know your name on the site or follow me at my profile page (so I can follow back).  Take baby steps.  Have a little fun -- you can make a custom rule to write each day, too, so it's not just physical health and fitness.