Day 75: Catching My Stride

Today, Thursday, February 10th, I feel I am finally catching my stride a bit with well, everything.

Looking back, I see I have written for one hour at roughly the same time now for 7 days, and after 75 days (not 21!), perhaps my early morning writing has finally become a habit. 

One of the magical things I have done this week, and what I have been trying to do all winter, is arrange everything so I have zero decisions to make before 8:15 in the morning. 

This has been a revelation. 

I have five days of clothing hanging on a 5-pronged hook over my door, one outfit for each workday, so I don't even have to spend time looking for or thinking about what to wear in the morning. If it’s Monday, you can bet I am wearing my Monday outfit. 

When I described this new hack to Jesse he asked me if picking out clothes in the morning was taking up that much of my attention. When he said this, I felt incredibly silly. Of course it’s not, I thought.

However, after trying the 5-days of clothing strategy, I have a lot more brain space left over, so it must be working somehow. Also, I have stored my writing materials and workout clothes within arms’ reach of my sleepy self at 5:30 AM. Thus, when my alarm rings, I can start getting dressed and writing without having to think about a thing. 

If I catch myself thinking, pondering whether I should get up, imagining other options for my morning, or figuring out when else I could do my hour of writing, I stop myself. Just do it, I say.

Then, if I do, the rest of my morning–or at least until the first bell rings at 8:15 and I see what my students are bringing in for the day–flows with no problems.

Also, I child locked myself out of my laptop at 9 PM every night. At 9 PM, my screen goes into downtime and I can no longer use any of the applications: no internet, no word processing, no calendar, no calculator, no nothing. After 9 PM, I can sit in front of my computer but it refuses to engage with me. Brilliant! 

Now, I used to know the parental code to unlock the computer myself—but this failed miserably because I just kept entering said code to extend my time in 15 minute increments, then one hour, then another, until all of a sudden it was almost midnight, I had wasted nearly three hours on unnecessary bullshit, and I would feel totally exhausted the next day. 

So, I gave Jesse my computer to create the passcode and asked him not to use a code I would be able to guess. He did well, apparently, because last night I tried to guess the code multiple times before the computer locked me out again. Then, I simply shut my (now useless) computer, sat silently for a few minutes, and got up and went to bed. 

Yea! Sanity (mine–in another moment when I asked Jesse to pick the passcode) trumps screen addiction!

Of course, if I need to ask Jesse to unlock my screen for 15 minutes or an hour, he could. Or at least, he could if he were not already asleep due to running on an even earlier schedule than me. But that necessitates a conversation and a legitimate reason for more screen time. 

“Why should I unlock your screen, Buse?” 

“Because I want to continue doing pointless bullshit on the computer for another two hours.” 

“No.” 

“Okay.”

So, it took a few months to figure this out, but I finally hacked my way into going to sleep on time! I must still avoid the phone, the Ipad and even good, old-fashioned books or risk staying up too late, but the computer was my prime offender, and since giving Jesse the code, I have gotten roughly enough sleep this entire week. 

And, even though we are in the toughest part of the school year, I feel pretty good this week. 

It turns out I do want to feel good, right, comfortable and well-rested. I do want to feel nurtured in my body, even when NOT taking care of myself proves the easy route. The staying up late, screen addicted, sugar craving, zero exercise, cheeto-eating Zombie route is undoubtedly easier than the getting enough sleep, healthy eating, exercising route–and no shade on this as it is how I survived most of my winters as a teacher before now, and was certainly how I survived the first year of a global pandemic. 

I used to binge watch entire series in the hours between 9 and midnight (or later) during the months from December to March: How I Met Your Mother, The West Wing (again), Friday Night Lights (also again). The worst was the year I tried and succeeded (in a manner of speaking) to watch seven seasons of Game of Thrones in the three months before the 8th season premiered. That is 63 hours of television (impressive, huh?) and I may have taken some personal days off to accomplish this.

But I now question the need underlying these actions. Was it the need for excitement in the monotonous and boring days of winter? Was it the need for companionship because I struggled to connect with actual people (not shocking, as I had gotten only five hours of sleep the night before.) Was it the need for escape from the (relative) pain of doing a really tough job at a really tough time of year? Or maybe the need for hope, which I could not create for myself, but needed manufactured and presented to me in a digital format. 

Yes.

I have also recently realized that maybe, in addition to the addictive properties of screens, sugar, junk food, whatever, my own subconscious desire to feel terrible was, in fact, driving me to do things that made me feel terrible. Logical, right? 

Because in the context of my life, having to rise four or five hours after I finally went to sleep and gutting it out while teaching the next day, these choices truly felt painful. But I was stuck in a powerful pattern. I was so deeply entrenched in this pattern I could not even see it as a pattern, let alone see the rationale behind it. I believed I was seeking pleasure, but was this a red herring? Is addiction mostly pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance? Or is it pain-seeking (in terms of the guilt and negative consequences that follow acting out) in pleasure-seeking clothing?

Either way, this line of thinking and questioning that has helped me reroute some of these negative habits. 

That and changing my defaults: removing the thinking, making it easier than not to do the thing I need to do, and disabling some of my routes of avoidance.

That threat, those threads–walking, writing, talking with Jesse, eating healthy foods, taking baths–I tried to grab on to in January are pulling me up now, as the sun rises earlier and the days begin to warm. Take my daily walks for example: yesterday, I had the thought that I was grateful my job allowed me 15-minutes to walk in the park each day. Mind you, I did not feel grateful at all, but I had the thought. And perhaps today as I walk, I will feel grateful as well.

Thoughts and feelings precede actions–that is classic cognitive behavioral therapy–but they can follow actions, too. So, I will keep walking and hope the good feelings and healthy thoughts–that I deserve to feel this good in my body, that rest and health and voice and space in the sunshine are meant for me, too–continue alongside it. 

After all, I've found that in order to catch your stride, you have to keep moving.