I’m back with the weather report. It seems like spring is actually here (at least during the day). It’s currently 69 (nice), and it’s supposed to be in the high sixties to high seventies for the next week,, with it going back to the high forties/low fifties during the night. Dare I say that winter is finally done for the year?
*Hastily checks the weather again*
Yes. I am calling it done on winter this yaer. Three months after it would normally end, but that’s Minnesota, especially in the years of our dastardly climate change. I don’t have much to say about that because that’s a war we’ve lost (among others). We could ‘win’ the climate change war if we wanted, but it would take much more effort than anyone is willing to give.
I’m on day two of going to bed at a reasonable-ish time (three-thirty a.m.), and I got almost eight hours. Well, seven-plus. Which is a big feat for me these days. And I only woke up once. Which is also unusual for me these days.
Big thanks to my friend who suggested that I just set a hard limit for myself in getting off my computer. I modified it by getting off my desktop to go to my laptop (which is by where I sleep) in order to do the last thing I need to do before going to bed.
I realized that part of my problem was that I was literally propping myself up (at my desk) when I should be going to bed. It was especially bad yesterday because I kept snoozing off, but I stubbornly refused to go to bed. I’m so like a toddler in that way. I will fight off all attempts to make me go to bed. As I’ve said several times, I’ve been doing this since I was seven, and I have the hardest time stopping.
With the same friend I mentioned above, I was talking about how some flaws can just be accepted while others need to be dealt with. This one needs to be dealt with, yes, but I can accept a 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. as my sleep schedule if I can do it regularly. I’m a bit bemused at how easily I made the hard switch because thats’ not something I’m usually able to do. I think it’s a few things.
One, making the physical change to the other room at a much earlier time makes it easy just to naturally fall asleep. Two, my sleep has been so shitty in the last few weeks that just moving to the location of sleep signified to my brain that it was time to sleep. So when I actually wanted to sleep, it was much easier just to let go and let sleep take over. Three, my body was just at that point. It had to sleep whether I wanted it to or not. Four, I do believe that my attempt to stay awake for 72 hours (stopping just shy of 48) jumpstarted the change.
It told my brain that I desperately needed the sleep and it was the slap in the face I needed to actually do something about it. Yes, it wasn’t right away, but that’s just how I work. I push against things (again, like a toddler) until I begrugdingly accept that I’m just going to have to do that damn thing.
I will say I’m doubly exhausted right now, but I think it’s because I’m realizing how sleep deprived I’ve been. It’s like when I was in college. I used to get four hours of sleep a night and then when I went home on break, I would sleep for fifteen hours the first night. My mom used to be concerned that I was sick, but, no, I was just that sleep deprived. I would often then get sick, but that wasn’t why I slept so much in the first place.
I know that it takes a while to form a habit. Huh. I thought it was six weeks (that’s an oft-cited number) on average, but my quick research tells me the average is more like 66 days–so over two months.
At any rate, it’s not quick. For me, however, the issue is that I have to make a mandate in my brain. Once I do that, I’ll follow it no matter what. For whatever reason, once my brain accepts that something is a ‘must do’, it’ll do it. Again, the trick is fooling my brain into thinknig something is nonnegotiable.
How did I do it this time? I just did it. Not a very satisfactory answer, I know, but that’s just how it is sometimes. A few days ago, I changed back to doing thet shit I needed to do earlier in the day (like I used to do) before allowing myself to mess around. I thought it would take me a while to actually do it, but once again, I tripped the wire in my brain that said this was just a thing I needed to do. It’s too early to say it’s a habit yet, but my brain is certainly treating it as a ‘must do’ rather than a ‘nice to have’ or ‘I’ll try it out one day. Maybe’.
I can’t explain my brain. Even if I have a vague idea of what’s going on (and I do), I would not feel comfortable explaining it to someone else. It would be this, “I have tried everything in order to go to bed at a reasonable (for me) time. Nothing has worked. So after much angst, I just did this thing that I could have chosen to do weeks/months/years ago, but I have not done it.” “Why not?” “Because.”
I’m being flippant, but it’s also true. I just have to reach a point where I’m done with it. I wish I knew what made me flip the switch like that because then I could do it knowingly and much earlier in the process. But, no. My brain does what it wants to do, and there’s only so much I can do to change that.
I will be grateful if this sticks; I will try my best to make it so.