In the spirit of starting again and with the knowledge that with persistence and thought I will solve this problem I’m proposing some “Sleep Rules”.

Sleep Rules
On “school nights” (Sunday thru Thursday)…

• I’ll turn the computer (and the t.v.) off by 10 pm.
• I’ll be in bed by 11 pm.
• On nights where I have to be out past 11 pm, I’ll go to bed no later than an hour after I get home.
• Once in bed, I’ll read till I feel sleepy. I won’t get out of bed if I feel anxious.
• I’ll get up 7-8 hours after I go to bed.
• When I get up, I’ll immediately drink a glass of water, then take a shower.
• After the shower, I’ll get dressed, eat breakfast then make my bed..
• If it’s an exercise day, I’ll exercise then do the water/shower/get dressed/breakfast/bed thing.
• I won’t turn the computer on until after I do my (exercise)/water/shower/get dressed/breakfast/bed.

On the weekends (Friday & Saturday)…

• If I’m with M., I’ll stay up as late as I’d like. I’ll get up 7 hours after I go to bed.
• If I’m not with M., but at home… I’ll go to bed no later than 2 am.
• If I’m not with M., and get home after 2 am, I’ll go to bed immediately after getting home.

I had success with a schedule similar to this a couple of weeks ago. Ultimately the “voices in my head” coupled with anxiety about going to bed at a consistent time derailed me. I want to give it another shot in the hope that through repetition I can break my bad habits and replace them with better healthier habits.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

So…

I will sleep in my bed for the next 30 days.

One other caveat:

No falling asleep to the TV, even if I am sleeping in a bed.

I don’t have TV in my bedroom, but if I happen to either be staying at a hotel or at my parents house during the next 30 days, this might come up. It’s good to be clear about this now.

I’ll suspend tracking when I go to bed for the time being, and have modified my sleep page to reflect this.

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30 Day Challenge guidelines can be found here.

30 Day Challenge: Sleeping In My Bed
Start date: Friday, June 9th
Check-in date: Saturday, July 8th

In the future I could also probably cut back on the amount of ground beef. I stuck to the prescribed one pound but I think it overpowered the rice somewhat. Also another note to self: The amount of water they suggest with brown rice never seems to be enough. I could probably have safely used 3 1/2 cups. The next time I’d also season the ground beef more when I was cooking it.

I’d try this again.

What is my real “Public Enemy Number One”?

It comes in three forms and they’re all interrelated:

Becoming Overwhelmed. Difficulty Staying Focused. Finishing.

I have days (sometimes single, sometimes multiple) where I get completely overwhelmed by life. Days where every action that I could take becomes almost painful because it seems hopeless. On days like this I either curl into the fetal position, or I find some mind numbing activity to escape into. On days like this my ambitions seem to wither and die. Simple things that might have a positive impact on my life become incredibly difficult to do.

The problem is that I have these type of days pretty periodically so it’s hard to build momentum. It feels alot like one step forward and two steps back. Like I said, I know that all of this stuff is interrelated. It becomes a “chicken/egg” spiral type of thing. I’ll feel overwhelmed, so I’ll spend the night on the couch and not in my bed. My sleep suffers, so physically I’m more apt to feel overwhelmed the next day. “Rinse & Repeat” until I manage to snap myself out of it.

“Becoming Overwhelmed” is a pretty inexact description of what’s going on. It feels like falling off a cliff into darkness in some ways. Staying focused is more difficult than ever.

I think this is part of the problem that I have with finishing projects. Not all projects, mind you. I have still been able to function in the world. I’ve accomplished some things. But always with the nagging thought that if only I could get my shit together I could be and do so much more with my life.

So there’s the triumvirate: I get overwhelmed, I have trouble staying focused, and then I end up not finishing things.

What the hell to do about it? At this time I have absolutely no idea. Maybe it’s enough right now to admit that this is the big “Public Enemy” that’s been holding me back. I’m gonna go take my walk that I’d planned for today and get some dinner. I may post some more thoughts on this when I get back. I may not. Just have to see! : )

I’ve created two new pages: Fitness Tracking and Walking Routes. “Fitness Tracking” will be a static page to keep track of my weekly exercise goals. With “Walking Routes”, I’ve used an online tool called G-Maps Pedometer to map out routes of varying lengths around the neighborhood. When I set a walking goal for the week I’ll have a clear idea of where to walk, and how far I’ve walked. With this information I can then track how fast I walk the route, the idea being that when I walk it faster I’m raising my heartrate and improving my overall cardio performance. This also will help with the boredom factor, because I can always map out a new route of the same distance. I think that the reason I’ve burned out on running in the past is because I really had no way to track what I was doing. (Though I’ll only be walking these routes… running’s too tough on my knees…) Hopefully this will help.

I’ll also have my list of exercises to choose from when I’m planning my workout for the week. The goal is to add as many different things as possible to this list so that I don’t hit the wall of boredom and stop working out. Also with this list I want to add as many things that I can do that don’t require alot of equipment. Hopefully I’ll also add a yoga practice and dance classes to this list as funds permit.

Having “Fitness Tracking” on it’s own page will make editing it from week to week much easier. I’ll also have a single .html file that I could archive later if the page becomes too unwieldy.

And here’s the plan:

• Each Sunday I’ll create a new entry for the upcoming week on my “Fitness Tracking” page by copying and pasting the previous week, just as I’ve been doing in the past in the blog post format. This is pretty quick to do.
• I’ll look at the previous week’s exercises and come up with my planned exercises for the week, using the choices from my Exercises page.
• I’ll take a look at my calendar and pencil in where I want to do these exercises. For example, I might look at my week and see that I have a heavy teaching day on Wednesday. This might be a good day to schedule as an off day. This would have the option to change as things come up in the week, but at least I’m starting with specific goals (eg. “Walk on Monday and Thursday”) in mind.

That’s it. That’s the plan. It might not be much, but at least it’s a start! : )

Ah, patterns are a wondrous thing to behold indeed! In the past I would have repeated this sleep pattern right into my teaching days. The whole week would have gone by and I would have gotten way less done than I might have otherwise because I was working on half a brain.

I am committed to creating a new habit in this area of my life. It’s this type of self observation and analysis that’s going to help me do it.

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Related articles:

• Erratic Sleep Patterns = Public Enemy #1
• Consistent Sleep Schedule

This is what I’ve slowly come to realize. Erratic sleep patterns literally mess with your brain. Chronically not getting the restorative REM sleep that you need affects your moods. If affects your outlook on life. Things seem worse than they really are. This has got to stop for me. It has got to become Public Enemy Number One if I’m ever to move forward and create the kind of change in my life that I want.

So what now? Well, hopefully just admitting that this is a habit that I must marshall all of my resources to change is a good start. I’ve known it for some time. (One of the benefits of this blog is that I’m able to look back and see what I’ve posted on this previously). I’m not certain what to do next. Maybe change comes slowly, and breaking habits that you’ve had for a long time takes alot of “two steps forward, one step back”. I know that Tony Robbins says that change can happen in an instant. Maybe the final change does happen in an instant. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be alot of starting an stopping beforehand. This habit has been on my radar to change for a while now. Maybe I’ve had just enough of feeling bad to make the change permanent.

Core / Strength / Cardio / Flexibility
M: pilates – modified flow
T:
W:
Th:
F: ball crunches – 2 sets
Sa:
Su:

In bed by:
M: c
T: 12
W: 12
Th: 1
F: 2ish
Sa: ungodly late because of gig
Su: c

Exercise descriptions can be found here.

–Update: 5/28/06–
I’ve decided that weekly posts aren’t the best way to track my exercise and sleep patterns. As of this update, I have about 6 weeks of “sleep tracking” posts that I’ve deleted, and aggregated into a single page. Fitness tracking is now here.

I really need a cookbook and some skills super quick.