Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Stay Crunchy. Organization as a fun pastime. Defeating insomnia with brute force.

It's a bit late! In the week I mean. It's not late yet at night. Still working on the early bedtime thing. I think I'm earlier than at least 80% of people, but still a bit away from what I'd like. I'd like to go to bed early enough that I can get up at 5am. Not because I'm a masochist, but because I love having my morning to meditate, remind myself of my goals, pray, exercise, get important focus intensive work done, and such. it feels really good to do all that first thing. It's like I've gotten a jump on the day and no matter what else happens, I've already accomplished the most important stuff.

I've been thinking that in order for that to happen, I probably need an evening routine as well. Something that sets me up for success getting into bed and feeling relaxed and settled enough to go to sleep at the right time. If I find myself having problems going to sleep (usually not a problem) I know I can just start on the other end. a few days of getting up at 5am no matter when I went to sleep and I stop having problems falling asleep, I've found. I don't have big anxiety problems though, in general. Anymore at least. I used to have pretty big insomnia/falling asleep problems. My mind would just keep going for an hour or two after the lights were out. I'm not sure what eventually worked, though I could guess. But I've been working on myself from so many different angles and methods it's hard to pinpoint sometimes, what it was that changed things. Though I know I discovered what it felt like to fall asleep instantly after my Scout class where I was in a kind of survivalist spiritual boot-camp for a week getting 4 or so hours of sleep a night. I feel like I just kind of crushed my insomnia through sheer brute force, and since then it kind of maintained that shape. Though I was pretty out of it for a while after the class. Sleep deprivation is an interesting thing. And it's interesting how much bigger the human bodies limits are than we think.

Anyhoo. I've been pretty good about exercising regularly  most days, especially when Suzannah is around. We go jogging in the morning for about 15 minutes, and it's really ideal: it's much easier to do when you have a workout partner, and we also get to feel good that we're helping the other be healthy as well. Sometimes we do indoor stuff when it's really cold. I'd like to increase my workout time to at least 30 minutes a day though, but that's not happening in the morning unless I get up earlier.

I need a paper handling habit. I have an overflowing inbox and sticky notes all over my desk, and more sheets of todo's spread across my desk. The disorder gets to me subtly. It's just not pleasant to sit down and work. I'm not sure how to create a system that will work for me though. I've started on a couple different systems, trying them out, but none of them stuck. I'm not sure if it's a matter of the systems not being a good fit, or my method of adopting them was ineffective, or if it's just a big time investment to learn and turn a system into habit no matter what, and I just don't have the extra bandwidth to do that these days. But it's starting to get up there on my priority list, so perhaps it will happen soon.

I know it will happen at some point, because it's a goal I have and I'm pretty good at eventually achieving my goals. But the lower priority one's can take a while, when there are so many.

I fantasize about having the time to work on this (creating a good organizational habit-set) and when I do it feels like leisure or play time.

OK, that's all for this week. Stay toasty. Or frosty. Or crunchy. Whichever you like. (that link goes to someone rocking a song I like, fyi)

-Isaac

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