I've neglected my blog a little these past couple days. I'm currently just a part-time retail worker and all of my shifts are short 5 hour ones, typically closing shifts. As a night owl, mornings shifts do not mesh well with me. I can wake up and get there on time, but I don't enjoy functioning on 5 or less hours of sleep. Well, the past two days I worked 2 8 hour shifts in a row, and one of them was an opening. It kinda kicked my ass. I feel a little ashamed and probably sound like I have the softest hands in the world saying this, but I am not used to those shifts at all. I came home and just wanted to scroll on my phone. I was a little proud of myself though: I ended up not playing on my phone all that much and actually did other things. I read my book, watched a few YouTube vidoes, and actually ended up watching Detective Pikachu on TV last night. I thought Detective Pikachu was a really fun and heartwarming movie. I remember thinking that the live action Pokemon designs looked rather off-putting when the movie first came out, but as I was watching it last night I thought they really nailed it. They made them look realistic without being off-putting. The Ditto was really terrifying though!

I actually did end up finishing The Brothers Karamazov today as well! It truly was a work of art and deserves all the recognition it has. The entire epilogue, especially the final chapter of the book, warmed my heart to the utmost degree and placed quite a nice ribbon on Dostoyevsky's magnum opus. I finished it before my shift today and found myself thinking about it throughout. In the future, I want to write a sort of mini-review about it. I don't want to go too in depth but mainly just offer some thoughts and share my favorite parts. I'll do that in one of my blog posts this week for sure.

While the 8 hour shifts were a little brutal, I'm already getting used to them. After all, I'm writing this blog post after today's one. Like almost everything in life, repetition solves all. I think another big thing is that I've successfully managed to build good habits for myself. Things like going to the gym and writing this blog post have become a part of my routine now. As such, rather than having to wrestle with discipline while dealing with work, I just have to pencil them in. For example, if I wanted to become a really good piano player from a complete beginner, I would have to practice reading notes, practice scales, train finger dexterity, figure out the best way to even practice all these things, all the while my brain still remains in an inefficient "learning mode." On the other hand, if I was already experienced, I know exactly what I want to practice and using up my time comes naturally. I can get my brain into concentrated "practice mode" very easily. I'm not sure if that all makes sense, but those are my thoughts on the matter at this moment in time. Of course I'm still learning how to learn about my learning.

I would not want to work full time in retail because it would make me do many bad things to myself, and I'm extremely lucky I'm in a position where I don't need to. Of course, though I have absolutely no clue at the moment, I do want to work somewhere full time in the future, and of course I will have to be there 8 hours a day so it's good to get used to it sooner rather than later. At the end of the day, when I really think about it, if I do end up working retail full time, that's just what I'll have to do, and it'll be alright with me. Maybe that's what I was destined to do. Someone's gotta do it, and I'm sure I could put a good spin on it. Another day of digging myself out of the underground tunnel network that I've decided to spend my 20s encasing myself in.