Are you hearing Usher in your head now, too? You’re welcome.

Anyways, I’m only the prologue + 20 pages deep into The Power of Habit, but so far the book’s anecdotes about how the brain works are fascinating. The author is pretty authoritative (unintended but interesting word connection there) about how with proper understanding, we can actually take control over our “bad’ habits, cravings and compulsions and rewrite them with “good” ones.

This seems like a rather lofty claim, but I’m definitely willing to see where this goes since my good habits could use a little more help in the actually being habitual department. My bad habits on the other hand are much more frequent house-guests, and I’m starting to get a little tired of their prolonged visits. I am chronically late. I (mostly) accidentally interrupt people. I forget painfully obvious, everyday things like filling up my gas tank (despite seeing the warning light) and returning Redbox rentals. I eat tortilla chips until I literally feel sick.

And then there are all the other ones far too embarrassing for public sharing, although the frightening possibility that someone will one day see all these private, bad habits firsthand grows increasingly real with every single summer weekend, as my boyfriend and I attend yet another wedding. Something about looking at these completely unique yet equally happy couples makes the whole (future) idea of marriage just a little more tangible as a real (future) option….in the future. But it’s not all romantic self-reflection. It’s a scary thing, being known. What if it’s embarrassing? What if that person doesn’t like some things about me? Heck even writing this blog is scary because people I actually know are starting to read it, and I have more than one self-inflicted scar from my teenage Xanga days.

This fear has led to more than one completely irrational overreaction in the form of fierce independence:

Caring Boyfriend, as I sass a digital kiosk for my own technical difficulties: “You seem frustrated.”

Me: “Don’t tell me how to feel, I am a perfectly capable adult who can manage my own emotions!!”

Oh yeah, that happened. (Note to self: the quickest way to not sound like an adult is to snottily assert I am one.)

Lydia’s recent post talked about embracing the scariness of change, and I for one am inspired. I’ll be over here embracing the scariness one self-deprecating story at a time, along with some change, too, if The Power of Habit is right. One can only hope this will happen before I’m caught in a dark kitchen with the freezer open and licking ice cream off my hands, right out of the carton.

Yup, that happened, too.