Happiness is not a Destination, it's a Way of Life

A crescent Earth sets behind the Moon.

On April 6, 2026, the Artemis II astronauts flew around the Moon, observing the far side – which we never see on Earth thanks to tidal locking – with their own eyes and with cameras.

See more of the Moon:

The “21 days” thing is a myth. Depending on the energy investment of the habit- or how big it feels to you- and your own personality and “brain chemistry,” you can spend months doing a thing day in and day out and STILL not feel like it’s actually automatic (habit or routine), still have to consciously and with great effort force yourself to do the thing.

One study (DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.674) that looked at time it took for people to turn various health-promoting behaviors into habits found:

Habit development rarely actually reached 100% automaticity. (Note: “automaticity” is a measure of how automatic doing the behavior felt based on a particular self-report scale that goes from 0-42; I’m converting this into a percent to make it feel more intuitive. 100% would be a score of 42 on the scale and would mean it was entirely automatic, involving nearly no thought on their part, whereas 0% or 0 would be essentially mean there was nothing automatic about it, would feel very purposeful/intentional.)

Some people (nearly 15% of participants) literally NEVER developed the habit. This is defined as an increase in automaticity to reach at least 50% automaticity (21/42) *based on mathematical model* that spanned not just the few months of the study but went out much further than that. Meaning that likely, even with multiple MONTHS of intentionally doing a thing, 15% of people might not be able to actually turn that into a true habit.

Most people who DID develop a habit developed it in a “asymptotic” way (about 51% of total participants). Meaning, the automaticity of the habit felt like it was increasing rapidly at first, then tapered off, approaching but never quite reaching a theoretical “maximum” automaticity. (If you’re interested, of the other 34%, a little over half had no good model or pattern to their automaticity- not even a linear pattern. Also, almost 5% of participants did show an asymptotic relationship between days doing the habit and automaticity but did not develop automaticity above 50% and thus were not classified as actually developing the habit).

Of the people who showed this pattern, the average “maximum” was 83% (35/42). Meaning on average, most people weren’t getting truly close to 100% totally automatic- there was still some level of purposefulness and/or ease (or low amounts of discomfort) in skipping the habit here or there.

Habits took anywhere from 18-254 days (some of this is based on model) with an average of 66 days to reach 95% of this “maximum.” That’s averaging a little over 2 months but spanning anywhere from a little over half a month to a little over 8 months + 1 week. While exercise behaviors took longer (average about 91 days) to achieve than eating or drinking habits, this wasn’t statistically significant. This is a very large span and indicates overall that individuals may differ in how long habits take to develop, and some habits may be quicker or slower to develop (perhaps based on effort or difficulty of the behavior change).

And the best of all: missing a day here or there (as long as it was isolated/not multiple in a row) didn’t actually affect automaticity all that much. The following day might have had to be just a little more purposeful, but only a very small amount on average. Essentially, if you miss one Monday gym session, it isn’t damning. If you fall asleep before you can brush your teeth Thursday night after a shit day of work, you’re probably not gonna totally forget again on Friday.

you can see the atmosphere. that halo around the edge, that's my air. the green on the upper right is my aurora. those are my clouds, my sunlight.

Sleep hygiene

Prioritizing rest

Drinking hydrating fluids

Eating a variety of fruits & veggies

Eating a variety of protein sources

This is going to be a really hard pill to swallow, but the truth is you might not be able to balance all your hobbies and all your projects the way you'd like. If you want to finish writing that book, you might have to reduce your daily drawing habit to a couple of times a week. If you want to do yoga every morning, you might have to accept not cooking from scratch as often. If you want to spend more time with your family, you might have to cut down on your yearly reading goal. I'm not saying give up on your hobbies; I'm be realistic with your time and your energy and be kind to yourself. Stop expecting yourself to do more and do better every single year. You don't have to constantly be growing upwards and reaching for the stars; you can be content with where you are, or even cut parts of yourself back to make space for other things in your life to bloom.

Our moon is number 5. It is smaller in direct comparison to the above moons. The diameter of the moon is 3475 km. That is a full 27% of the diameter of the Earth. More than a quarter. That's ridiculous. It's unheard of. The universe is large enough that the word unique probably doesn't mean a lot, but this might be about as close as you get.

This has had a huge impact on our planet. Other things aliens might not have are significant tides. One of Mars's dumpy little potatoes wouldn't be able to move oceans the way our moon does.

Our moon has also stabilized our axis to a massive degree. Without her up there our axis would wobble all over the place and our climate would be far more chaotic. Aliens might not be quite so lucky.

Space is big, empty, and loud. Sunspots can cause enough interference to affect global communications. We’re not even loud enough to talk over our own sun. On our own planet. We can barely communicate with Voyager, and we know exactly where it is and what its signal sounds like.