Comic Books help me feel more grounded: The results of my Weekly Routine Experiment

The Benefits of Routine

The benefits of a daily routine have been widely published for use in increasing focus, automating your productivity, reducing mental fatigue, feeling mentally grounded, etc.

My Experiment

About 3 months ago, in a post here on Steemit, I detailed my plans to form a simple weekly routine in an attempt to increase a sense of groundedness in my life. I'm 30 years old, work from home, and live alone in a 600 square food 1-bed apartment in Houston. Most of my friends are married, doing their own thing, and my work-life/personal-life seems to have meshed together in my head - tethered to being inside my apartment. I thought a weekly routine that took place outside of the apartment, might help to enforce certain parts of my personal-life identity and differentiate it from my work-life identity.

I decided to do something simple, once a week, walk to my local comic book store (it's less than a mile away,) buy a comic, talk to everyone there, and come home to read it outside in my apartment's courtyard. 

Why Comic Books?

I chose comic books for 4 reasons.

1. I know next to nothing about comic books or the comic book community. I wanted to choose something foreign to me, something that was new that I could learn about; to meet new types of people and have new experiences.
2. New comic books, as I've recently learned, come out once a week on Wednesday, so it was perfect to setup with a weekly routine. 
3. The closest comic book store to where I live is less than a mile away, so I can include a nice walk to and from as a part of the routine. I wouldn't have to travel anywhere far or inconvenient. 
4. I'm a pretty big Star Wars fan: I read the books, re-watch the movies, play the video games, and even have toys. Every since Disney took ownership of the franchise, they have allowed Marvel to produce A LOT of Star Wars comic books (and they are all considered canon: part of the official overall story.) So it seemed like a good entry point (in my first post on the subject, I said I was going to enter into the Poe Dameron series at issue #25.)

The Results

AMAZING! It might seem simple, if you're spending too much time at home, then get out more. But, I have to say, the way I gave prior thought and attention to this decision really made a huge impact on my life. I do feel a sense of peace knowing what's going to happen every Wednesday, and I'm able to mentally attach this weekly action to my non-worklife identity, which is helping with my prior feelings of displacement. I might even have to add in a second weekly routine!

Ten days ago, I discovered a psychologically-driven Batgirl story that fits in with the content I blog about on here and decided to post about it. Since then I met @blewitt here on Steemit, who owns his own comic book shop, and I've been following him. Yesterday, Wednesday July 4th, I went to pick up Marvel's Star Wars Issue #50, but after reading his post about staying open late for a special DC Batman release (I haven't read any Batman since I was a kid,) I decided to get into that series as well to see what it was all about!

Here's my loot from yesterday: (thanks @blewitt!)

And, yes, I've still been reading new issues of Poe Dameron as they are published (they are now going into stories that take place after the events of The Last Jedi film, if any one is interested.)

What do you think?

That's it for my experiment! Please let me know in the comments below what you think and if you enjoyed this content - please consider an upvote! Thanks!