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Day 8: Regrouping
As you may have seen yesterday it was pretty much a write-off. I was very tired and it makes my brain shut down. However there are things I was proud of.
Firstly I spoke to my wife and explained to her that I had stayed up late and that because of that I felt mean and not a good person to be around. I wanted to get ahead of the impact that my mood would have had. Someone who is very sensitive to danger like my wife, would feel very on edge all day if I hadn’t as she would unconsciously pick up on the change in my demeanour and perceive it as a threat. I wanted to make it very clear that I had fucked up and it was my fault, and that I wasn’t going to take it out on her.
She asked if there was anything she could do to help, and I asked if we could watch a show together later. Which we did, and it did help.
I saved my self the hassle of cooking anything difficult for dinner and we had beans on toast (what a powerhouse of a meal, never disappoints).
I was in bed for 10:15pm and asleep for 10:30pm, so the restart of this process has happened. Now I just need to ensure I walk the dog, doing something productive with my day at home and at work, and have a shower, then I’ll feel like I’m back on track.
Emotionally I feel empty, which is how I usually feel, but yesterday I felt that emptiness as a deep weight I couldn’t hold, and today it feels more like the absence of that weight. Like having a heavy rucksack removed after a long punishing walk through a storm. It’s nice not to feel the weight on my shoulders, but I’m still cold and wet and exhausted. It’s not a happy place I’m in but it is a better place.
I’m keeping it short today. I might come back to this later.
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Day 7: What a weakend (pun intended)
So the weekend didn’t go so well. I have to journal every day to keep me on track I think. I had a later night than usual on Friday as “a treat” but only around 11:30pm, so opted to wake up latest by 8.30am the following day. I was awake by 8am the next day, it was fine, and my sleep score was 96/100.
[Whay are treats always something that’s essentially damaging to us?]
Rather than sticking to the morning pattern I had in place, I opted to laze around in bed instead. I was treating the Saturday as If I had a day off from work, as though the self-work I was doing I required rest from. To be honest it felt like I did need a rest. Most of what I am putting in place probably sounds very simple to most people but it is mentally taxing, but maybe that’s because I was viewing it through a lens of something I didn’t “want” to do, and something I’m forcing myself to do because I need to.
Right now my head is very tired and full of things it doesn’t understand, so lets deal with that. Full transparency, is that I can’t give you full transparency. Some of the the things in my life aren’t just my thing to share, some of the the things that affect me aren’t my things to share at all. Such is the life of choosing to be committed to one person, you have to take the bad days along with the good, in whatever ratio those are metered out.
But this weekend was hard and good too.
The good. I’d organised to go bowling and minigolf with a friend and had invited my wife along too, which she had been very energised about. That sounds like I don’t want her to come to things like this. It’s not that, it’s that if I tell her we are doing something she won’t want to, and if I told her I was doing something without her, she’d feel left out and have feelings of FOMO. So I state that I am making plans, what those plans are, and then offer her to come should she want to.
Come Saturday, and her mental health kicked in along with the pre-event issues of not feeling like she wanted to do the thing she’d been so excited about. That’s hard to deal with every time we do something, to have the same “I don’t want to go” conversations. It does rob me of the momentum I had tried so hard to build up for myself. Once we made it to Bowling she did start to have a a great time, and we were very affectionate with each other. But then because she was having fun, her mental health stepped in and wanted to talk about the most horrific thing she is going through right now. It’s not something I can share here. I will always try and support her when she needs to talk about stuff, I just wish it could come out at times when we aren’t trying to have a nice time. I know that’s selfish of me, but there were 167 different hours that week that we could have spoken about it, and it’s exhausting to have it spoken about at a time I had tried so hard to elevate my mood to participate in life. It was even more exhausting to then switch back into to fun mode after the conversation was brought to a close.
Apart from that, bowling and minigolf were lots of fun.
Because I struggle to self-regulate emotions, or even experience emotions at all, the only way I’ve found to handle things like that is to isolate myself and be self-destructive. It must be a form of taking control. At least if I feel bad then I’m the one making me feel bad, and not anyone else. I wonder if that stems from the time my mum was dying of cancer and I couldn’t control or influence the outcome, it was something that life forced on me, perhaps I don’t ever want to feel like I’m in that position again. I don’t know.
Saturday night ended up being a slightly later bedtime at 12:30 pm, and although it was a later night I stuck to the hugely reduced mobile phone use, and played video games instead. But again, I slept Ok and Sunday morning I had a sleep score of 88/100.
But I hadn’t journaled, I hadn’t walked the dog, I hadn’t taken any vitamins and so on, and Sunday was even worse.
I woke up this morning to a sleep score of 46 after going to sleep past 4am.
Yikes.
Lets not try that coping mechanism again.
What went wrong yesterday. I had planned a date night for us around a fire, and watching an episode of a series we are currently working through. Watching an episode each night is something we do to have a point during the day to connect, however this had been absent the previous week and I think that has made me feel unwanted. So as a treat I got us something nice to eat and a bottle of white malbec to share (I know right??!! you don’t usually see white malbec)and we agreed to meet at 6:30pm for fire and tv time.
6:30pm came round and she had not come downstairs. 6:45pm and still nothing. I had to go upstairs to chase her. This again, made me feel unwanted, and that’s a hard thing for me to feel, despite the fact I always tell people I don’t want or need anything from anyone.
Rather than hold it in like usual, I was given an opportunity to share, as my wife asked me if there was anything she could do to help me with my mental health. I said the things she could help with would to be on time if we’ve agreed to do something together, rather than for me to need to chase her. Though I didn’t go into the emotions surrounding that. She asked what else she can help with, and I said nothing because I honestly didn’t have something else on my mind.
She said there must be something else, because I said things. I tried to assure her there wasn’t. She told me to tell her. That she will be worried sick if I don’t, because there must be something else, because I said things.
So I said do you want me to just make something up, because you’re not accepting what I am saying? Then I remembered a thing that is something that’s ongoing our lives so I flippantly raised that. We had spoken about this topic several months prior and the conversation had been productive and open. I was expecting that to be the same here, but instead I was met with pain and resistance, an upset wife, and her leaving the space I had created for us both.
In that moment I felt like I was being emotionally punished for saying the wrong thing. My wife left the space and I was left alone with a full bottle of malbec, which I then drank. I attempted to take ownership later that evening, for the way in which I had spoken about the topic, and although my apology was accepted it was from a frosty demeanour.
My attempts to connect us had backfired most spectacularly and I was left feeling very alone and sorry for myself. Hence why I had three more beers and stayed up until 4am as a way to punish myself harder than the emotional punishment I felt I had received.
The reality of the situation is that she was just feeling her emotions about a topic and seeking her own method of self soothing. I doubt there was any intention on her part to emotionally wound me in that moment, or in the hours that followed.
So here I am today. back on this horse of self care. I’m not off to a great start, but it is a start. I have to remind myself that all I ever have is this moment, and what has gone before is irrelevant, and what is to come is never set. My future is made from the small choices I make in each present moment.
I have had a shower. I have drank my vitamin soup. I have fed my animals. I’m not a bad person. I’m just a person that doesn’t understand how he feels, and trying to understand those feelings, is fucking exhausting. I’m scared.
I’m scared of who I am if I’m not depressed.
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Day 4: Maybe I’m not superhuman?
I’d always prided myself on being able to be “just fine” on 6 hours sleep. Oh dear…I think I may have made a mistake there.
Strategies for last night worked, and I was able to fall asleep in short order around 10:30pm. I woke up this morning shortly before 6:30am after having the longest stream of dreams about a mob family in New York, that lasted multiple generations. I woke from this dream feeling like I’d lived several lives, and a profound sense of awe, gratitude and privilege that I’d been able to witness that story. It made Breaking Bad and the Sopranos look like badly written sit-coms.
Had I been able to hold on to the story and write it down, I’d make millions in publishing. But alas, the details are eroding as dreams do. But the feelings I felt when I woke up have remained.
Actually the emotions I felt have remained. I felt something other than nothing for once. What a delight!!
If this is what I can feel with a good nights sleep then I think I need to be taking it more seriously as a treatment method.
For context, the end of the dream saw me as the last surviving member of the family as I am about to embark on a life away from the crime and misfortune. I go to park my car to attend the funeral of my father, and through being moved on by a police car to park elsewhere a stream of knock-on events occur. I attend the funeral late just as someone else is walking through the church door, they offer me a job working across the country and after the funeral I choose to leave my home and New York for good, just wearing the clothes on my back and nothing else. The last scene leads to someone breaking into my apartment to squat, they fall asleep naked on my luxurious bed. In the night the apartment is overrun by men in black who grab the guy out of the bed and slam him onto a table thinking he is me. You witness this from an aerial vantage, panning away from the screaming man, as the masked intruders slam several screwdrivers into his limbs pinning him to the table. The scene ends with one through the eye socket, as they write lines and symbols all over his body, but the main word you see is UNUNITY over and over. You realise the mob family was a cover for something much older and darker.
Don’t get me started on the second dream about the house floating on a river, and the man that owned it who spoke to me of techniques for making wooden chairs that involved carving a mould out of stone, and then letting the tree grow around it for 50 years, then chiselling the stone out. His lesson was one of something worthwhile taking time and patience, and that we as a species had lost touch with the joy felt from something beautiful taking time develop. Everything is so immediate. I can’t help but think this was my subconscious encouraging me to stay away from the short lived dopamine hits of social media.
When I roused myself from the dreams fully, I checked the weather and it was around freezing and rainy. I wasn’t going to subject my dog to that, so I nodded back off to sleep for 45 minutes, which was lovely.
Woke up and fed everyone, showered, had my pint of vitamin soup and ready to start the day. I even had half an hour spare to do some inventory management on Fallout 4. Nice.
Work has still been a struggle and something I am focusing on. Though the main battle has been my own emotional foundation, sleep, and having a house that’s tidy and a joy to be in.
To that end I’ve created a schedule over the last few days for daily chores that are easy to do one day at a time, but daunting to consider as a whole. In fact I’m not going to label them as chores; I’m labelling them as “gifts of peace” I can give myself each day. A tidy room just makes my brain feel tidy, which can’t be a bad thing.
Maybe this is the approach I need to factor into work. Work = big and daunting; small tasks towards larger goals = gifts of work peace.
I’m enjoying the act of writing each morning. I may also start doing this at night as a way to unload the day before bed and setting intentions for the next day, so I don’t need to “plan” as I’m falling asleep.
If I existed as “tomorrow me”, then my life would be perfect. At night “present me” tells “tomorrow me” all the things they need to do to succeed in all aspects of life and be this paragon of perfection. Unfortunately, when I wake up the next day it’s not “tomorrow me” that wakes up, it’s “present me”, and he’s the one that’s great at planning and poor at execution.
As a final aside, I have taken the minimalist app off my phone as I didn’t want to pay £4.99 a month for it (living in Yorkshire truly has seeped into my bones), but I have managed to use “Modes” on my android phone to achieve a similar thing, It’s enabled me to lock away my social media apps so I can’t use them at certain times. Yes it’s easier to circumvent, but if I was determined to go on an app, I’d circumvent the minimalist app too. I’ve also used the Digital Wellbeing section to add a timer of an hour across all my social apps each day. That’s not an hour each, that’s an hour across all of them. Yesterday I used 30 minutes, so it’s working well.
Tomorrow sees the end of dry January. I do still crave a beer when I see them in the fridge though; which means I’ll be holding off drinking anything for a while longer. My strategy for dealing with alcohol in general is to only drink if I’m away from the house for an occassion, or if we are having a date night at home. But drinking during the week, drinking alone, drinking cos it’s in the fridge and I fancy a beer or a rum, are all out of the window.
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Day 3: Sleep is overrated anyway
Another night of not being able to sleep straight away. This is mad to me and out of character.
Weirdly I had a dream last night that I was driving my car and trying to take a shortcut down a single lane side street. The road I turned onto was heavily blocked with parked cars on both sides, that I had to try and slowly swerve through with only cm to spare. As I turned a bend, I looked ahead and I could see that the shortcut was actually a dead end. I went to reverse and slowly inch my way backwards the way I came, but both my front tyres had perished and I found I was riding on the rims, with no ability to steer, and only the sound of screeching metal against tarmac.
If that isn’t the perfect fucking metaphor for how I’m feeling right now…
The more I thought about sleep on my walk with the dog this morning, the more I think that maybe I don’t just fall asleep instantly it’s probably a combination of two things.
Thing 1: I’ve spent most of my adult life going to bed way later than is healthy. So If I’m going to sleep at 12:30am, 2:00am, 4:30am (this was a recent one) then of course I’m going to fall asleep immediately.
Thing 2: Having spent decades of late nights I was always up and at ’em between 7:30am and 8:00am. Having animals will do that for you, they need feeding and letting out for the loo. So the times on the weekend where I would decide to have a nap, I had instant sleep because I was sleep deprived.
When I began this process I was wide awake the first day at 6am, because I was able to fall asleep instantly the night before, due to catching up on a massive sleep deficiency.
What does this mean? I think I need to adapt things a little. I woke at 6am this morning and did not feel rested. I considered going back to sleep, and tried to do that, but it wasn’t happening in 15 minutes so I chose to abandon that course. I sat in bed for 15 minutes, and I used my phone to regulate myself with Instagram (Cold turkey isn’t good for you, I set myself a 15 minute timer and stuck to it), got up at 6:30am and walked the dog to the local shop and we got things in for lunch later. I got back, had a shower, fed animals, cleaned litter trays, made myself a pint of vitamin soup, loaded the dishwasher, and weighed myself.
My weight had crept up to 13st 9.5lb as of 1st January, so one of the things I have been trying to do (most unsuccessfully with depression) was to lose some weight. I think a good weight for me to be at would be around 12 to 12.5st. I’m down to 13st 1.8lb this morning, so nearly 8lbs lost. I feel good that it’s going in the right direction. I think cutting alcohol out of my diet has been the trick here, as I haven’t really tried with my diet.
I feel like I’m getting off course… Yes! adapting my schedule.
So a 10:30pm bedtime and a 6am rise in the morning gives me in theory 7.5 hours sleep, assuming I fall asleep instantly and don’t wake during the night. I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation.
I need to remember, I don’t need to be perfect. I just need to be adequate at this stage. That I’m not a failure for not being able to do what I set out to do. That the only failure lies in stopping trying.
So the adequate thing to do, would be to go to bed earlier or get up later, or a combination of both. To that end I’m going to set my wake up alarm for 6:30am and see how that goes.
I’ve been using video games as a way to curb my phone addiction. At least with video games it allows for long term attention span and goal achievement, as opposed to doom scrolling on my phone. It has been very effective and I’d say my phone use is down by 90% – But it’s still a stimulating thing to be doing before bed. Maybe going immediately from video games to try and sleep isn’t the best choice. Adaptation number two will be to turn off video games and screens in general at 9:30pm. See how that impacts my ability to fall asleep by 10:30pm.
I also need to print out my affirmations and have them somewhere I can easily see / read, as I’ve not done any of them yet.
I’m proud of myself for the changes I am making, and I’m excited for the changes to come. I don’t know who I will be without depression, and that’s scary to me. Maybe not scary, maybe it’s anxiety. Maybe it’s excitement. I don’t know. I’m not very emotionally aware, so I can’t pin it down.
Wait, that’s a statement of fact as though it’s who I am intrinsically. Let me rephrase. Emotions historically have been hard for me to access and understand. They don’t need to be that now or in the future. I can sit with this feeling without dismissing it or hiding from it.
[picture today is of the boy cat, who likes being held like a baby]
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Day 2: Sleep…Why have you forsaken me?
I have always had the enviable ability to fall asleep easily. Even if everything in my life is falling apart, I drop off without a care in the world.
Until last night.
I had my routine nailed and everything, but when I lay down at 10:30pm I just couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable, I was too hot, and my mind kept talking to me. Not about anything in particular, just noise.
I wonder if my historical ability to sleep was a defence mechanism against life. Like a physical off button to reality and accountability. Something to ponder, but this morning my brain is also full of mental chatter. I never had mental chatter before, there was always a clear absence of thought. Like my brain was in standby mode all the time.
My alarm blasted me awake at 6am, but I didn’t feel rested, and adequate sleep is absolutely my kryptonite if I don’t get enough. I checked my sleep score and it was low 60s, which is how I felt. I needed more sleep. So I set my alarm for 7am and was luckily able to drop off again.
I awoke feeling like a failure, but quickly shook off that emotion. I’ve always strived for perfection, but the fear of not being perfect has always, without fail, stopped me from even trying. I’ve existed in a perpetual fugue of convincing myself I’m capable of anything, but never attempting anything, so as to preserve that illusion of self. I’m no longer going to strive for perfect, I’m going to strive for adequate, because I know I can hit adequate without feeling like a failure; and being adequate at something is an infinite improvement on being nothing at something.
Upon waking the second time I chose to adapt my morning schedule. I kept walking the dog, drinking a pint of water, feeding the pets, and journaling. Those are all vital for the morning. I threw out exercise, because I can always do that in my lunch hour, as my time for exercise is only 30 minutes.
I’m going to keep showering and shaving to this morning as well. I like the mental image of cleaning my body, soul & mind ready for a new day. It will just happen after journaling.
I’m not really sure what my mental chatter is about. I know people that have that and it’s an endless stream of self limiting thoughts and feelings. I’m not sure whether I need to relax and let the thoughts come and see where they lead, or if I maintain my composure and keep a blank slate. I know peace is found in the absence of thought, meditation and the like. However, I’ve always been afraid of having emotions, to the point where I’m convinced I don’t have any, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking as the emotions I have I’m not able to cope with. I don’t know, but just that thought has filled me with a bit of dread, so I might be onto something.
Another thing to ponder. Who am I, if I’m not a solid rock for other people to hold onto, when the world is bashing them about. What if I’m actually the one being bashed?
Thing to ponder number 2, isn’t “bash” a weird word. The more I look at it, the more it feels like I just made it up.
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Day 1: The beginning of the routine
Well I’m here. It’s 7:20 am, a little behind schedule, but that is down to the schedule being a little tight. Whatever flavour of neurodivergence I have was a little miffed that things weren’t hit on the exact time they were set, but the overwhelming response to this should be pride that I was able to do the things at all. I’ll stick with that. Doing the things is more important than doing the things on time.
I was tested though. I wake up and it’s miserable outside. Rain, wind, cold, pitch black. Not the easy transition I would have hoped for getting up and walking the dog, but I sunk my pint of water and vitamins, got dressed and put my anorak on. The dog was thrilled to see her lead and go out. She was equally pleased walking around sniffing things in the pouring rain and wind. I think the lesson here is to find joy in what you’re doing, rather than wishing it was somehow different.
I have spent most of my life postponing wellness in a sense. I’d think that “when I’m better” I’ll be successful at work, I’ll work out every day and be in shape, I’ll eat well and have really cool hobbies. It reminds me of the Cher quote when her mother asked her about settling down and finding a nice rich man, and her response was “I am a rich man”. I think I’ve been doing it all wrong. Perhaps the “well me” isn’t needed to do all these things, perhaps it also works backwards, and that be doing these things is what manifests a “well me”.
Getting out of bed this morning was relatively easy. I was asleep before 11pm, and definitely had some very vivid dreams in the night, meaning I spent quite a bit of time in REM sleep. So I woke up pretty refreshed, with 7 hours under my belt and a sleep score of 87/100 I’ll play around with sleeping for 8 or 9 hours in the future, but I’m not sure I need it.
I did work out. Go me! It was only half an hour, but that’s infinitely more than I have been doing and I want to start off easy, so I don’t skip a day because of DOMs. Just a simple 4 exercises for 3 sets, chest press, lat pull down, shoulder raises, bicep curls. I’m not concerned with the weight at this stage, that’s irrelevant, I want to get two things out of this stage of exercise.
- Consistency of habit
- A stronger back
My back has plagued me for years. I think I have poor core and lumber tone and it’s caused me to rely on resting weight on the curve of my lower spine. In periods where I have been lifting heavy (decades ago) I think the weight of heavy squats has compressed my spinal discs. I’m working on rehabbing my spine to have a stronger core that can handle the weight. To that end each exercise is done incredibly mindfully with a focus on keeping my lower back and ab muscles tensed. Muscles I’ve rarely used, hence why taking it slow is best.
Another thing I’d like to work on in a couple weeks is a set of exercises I found that are a mix of yoga, pilates, and physio. I’ll keep you posted on that.
Right now I need to head off to feed and wake up the house, have a protein shake and scream affirmations into the void.
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Day 0: part deux. Do affirmations and the like have an effect?
I saw a post on Instagram (yes one of the sites I am weaning myself from – but this was something I saved some time ago to come back to) and it spoke of affirmations / abundance spells. Now I don’t need to go into what I believe when it comes to magic, but I think all types of “magic” is essentially wiring you for pattern recognition. You speak an intention, which is a subtle way of programming your subconscious to seek that outcome.
In any event the post spoke as follows.
“before you begin: close your eyes. Breathe into your body until you feel yourself soften. Let the edges of you dissolve. Become space. Become breath. Become presence. Feel the hum of your energy — alive, awake, infinite.
let your throat glow — a portal of power, a bridge to becoming.Then, when you are ready: speak these words. OUT LOUD. Your voice is the portal. Your presence is the key.
✦ THE ULTIMATE ABUNDANCE SPELL ✦
I let go of my belief that success is suffering. I erase every limit I ever absorbed. I dissolve the old codes of survival. I re-code myself for infinite receiving.I know who I am. I know what I hold. I know what I’m here to become.
I move like money is my mirror. I breathe like wealth is my witness. I speak like success is my shadow.
I don’t chase. I don’t cling. I don’t crawl.
I call. I claim. I command.
I am not waiting. I am not wishing. I am already walking in it.
I am the source and the supply. I am the river and the rain. I am the answered prayer.
It is already mine. It is already done. It is already here.
→ repeat 3x. out loud. → then seal it with: by the power of three, a perfect trinity. it is done. it is done. it is done.”
So yeah, it sounds a little bit woowoo. But what’s the harm in spending a few minutes a day going through this ritual, to see what happens?
The author of the instagram post was blairewitchfairy
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Day 0: What a difference a day makes…unless it’s twelve years, then there really is no difference at all.
It’s wild to me that the last time I even thought about writing about myself was over twelve years ago. I’ve now been in a new relationship for nearly a decade and married for nearly nine years.
Reading back on my last post (not on this blog, this is new), I feel like I could have written the exact same thing today. I’m going to try writing my thoughts down daily and see where that leads me. If nothing else it may make me present in my life, which is the only place you can be to exert change. I understand that writing thoughts down with a pen and paper will probably have more of an impact (body/mind connection etc), but I’d like to be able to some day to read back on these things, and even I can’t read my own handwriting.I’ve been saying “this is gonna be my year” for 20 plus years now. I’m kinda getting tired of my own voice.
I recently had the most severe depressive episode of my life. I’m hopefully coming out of the other end with some small steps to nudge me on a more soothing path of self care. But as a broad scope of things in my life that are holding me back (maybe) here they are. None of these come from a place of judgment. I’m not going to feel bad about any of these, but they exist, and casting a light on something hopefully leaves it no shadows to hide.
- Phone and Social Media addiction (mainly short reels and videos)
- Very poor sleep schedules (the one I struggle with the most, and the one that will absolutely have the most benefit)
- Overeating to give dopamine / serotonin
- Drinking too much for the same reason
- Lack of exercise
- Being overweight
- Not giving my dog the sort of life she deserves when it comes to getting out of the house
- Disconnection from my emotions (huge one, not sure if this is fixable, it might just be the way I’m built)
- Disconnection from my relationship as a result of the above
- Disconnection from friends as an additional knock on effect
- Lack of libido. I don’t think this is something I can work on, but I think fixing the above will correct it
- Lack of purpose
- Lack of creativity
- I love gaming and can get very sucked in, which has been helping my curb my phone addiction. I need to find a way to enjoy gaming whilst also facilitating the above course corrections.
I think I’d be happier in jail to be honest. I wouldn’t have to think about any of the above, the routine would just happen and I think having a rigid routine is where my success will come. But I would miss my wife. I’m also not a fan of being penetrated (shiv or otherwise).
People always say to try and tackle things one at a time. Slow and steady. Get one thing sorted before you try and tackle something else. To me this has never worked. If I try and sort one thing, the other things will get worse to try and correct the dysregulation I feel. If I get good sleep, I’ll start eating more. If I sort my diet, I’ll focus on the phone too much. I need to tackle several of these issues at the same time to punch through to a different state of being.
Here are the things I’m tackling first. These will be made with statements of who I am as a person, rather than who I want to be. If I make them as something I want to be, my brain will just focus me into being a person that wants to be these things. If I focus on them as something I am, my brain will work its little jelly mush into pattern recognition opportunities to fit this person.
I am a man who goes to bed each night by 10:30pm, leaving a pint of water by my bedside. I wake at 6am in the morning, only touching my phone to turn off my alarm. I love the peace at that time and the ability to hear my own thoughts and emotions. I drink a pint of water with a vitamin c and zinc tablet, and take some multi vitamins and cod liver oil. To help me wake up, I go downstairs and harness the pooch, and take her out for a 20-30 minute walk. This is a time to be present, to focus on deep breathing and deep thinking. When I get home I do 30 minutes of weights each day, followed by a protein shake, which serves as my breakfast. At 7am I shower and shave. Around 7:15am I sit to journal and think about how my day is going to look. 7.30 to 8.30 is time to feed the animals, sort out litter trays, and ensure the house is tidy for the day. I can use this time to scroll on my phone if I choose to. I work diligently each day, I perform my daily housekeeping tasks in the first 2 hours of the day. The rest of the time is devoted to adding value to the company one way or another. At lunch I eat something healthy in line with my current goals, I take the full hour for myself and I engage with non work related endeavours. After work until 6:30pm I make dinner and catch up on any chores that need doing, whilst listening to an album of music. My phone allows access to social apps between 12-1pm and 7pm-10:30pm, if I choose to engage with them. From 10pm I ensure the house is settled for the night I put the animals to bed, load the dishwasher and wipe the work surfaces down, give my wife a cuddle and a kiss and ensure my sleep environment is free of any clutter. I like going to sleep in a tidy room, as it allows my brain to also feel uncluttered before bedtime.
That should in theory tackle sleep, which is obvious, and will reap the most rewards. The daily exercise will also help with sleep and have knock on benefits when it comes to losing weight, and food & alcohol; when I work out I don’t want to jeopardise my progress with those things. Walking the dog helps with purpose, as does working diligently. Phone addiction is handled by an app (how ironic) that limits the time I’m able to spend on things that are time sinks, but once that pattern is there for a few months I won’t need the app anymore. Getting those things sorted will raise my baseline of self-worth and energy. Then we can focus more on the other aspects of relationships, libido, emotions, purpose and creativity.
I am already the man I want to be. I just have to walk that path.
Choosing life is hard, but so is choosing to die every day
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Inaction is a choice 