Week 5 began with a focus on mindfulness and then moved into a focus on self care on Wednesday. The move was more of a transition than a switch being flipped. I found that the last couple of days of August, I started shifting my thinking to self care, as evidenced by my obsession with sugary confections. By the time September 1st rolled around, I was halfway into the resolutions anyway, so the shift was pretty smooth.
I currently have mixed feelings about the self care resolutions. After the intensity of mindfulness, self care seems a little mundane. I admit that the no-sugar, no-alcohol thing really seems to be contributing to my energy and happiness, but the verdict on the other resolutions isn’t quite as clear. Not that I need to or should make a judgment about them just 5 days in, I just have clearer feelings about the sugar-and-alcohol resolution. And I’m really enjoying my de-alcoholized wine. It’s not as good as “real” wine, but it’s close enough that it feels like a minor miracle to drink it and feel neither tipsy nor ill.
The ten-minute walk I’ve done all days but one. It’s nice enough but is so far a bit of a challenge to work into my day. I think the walk, like the mindfulness resolutions, could have a cumulative effect if I do it every day. So, I’ll try to stick it out.
My body seems to still be adjusting to getting veggies at every meal. By which I mean, you’d probably not like to ride in a closed car with me these days. I remember that back when I became vegetarian (I eat meat now, but I was vegetarian for about 7 years), it took a couple of weeks to get my system acclimated to the new fiber content of my diet. I (and my husband) hope this is the case with the veggie thing, too.
The resolution about going to bed earlier? Well, I have to confess that I’ve been trying to weasel my way out of that one. I said to myself, “You know? It’s probably too abrupt a change to go from a midnight bedtime to a 10:30 bedtime really fast. In the interest of moderation, I should scale back a half-hour a week. This week: bedtime is 11:30.” (I enjoy making proclamations to myself.) The first night, I got to bed at midnight. No worries, I’ll try again Thursday. 11:44 was what the clock said when I set my glasses on the night stand. Getting closer! Then Friday night, I stayed up until 2am finishing The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I’ve done my best not to think about bedtimes since then.
My question for myself is this: when I say I’m going to go to bed earlier, am I just lying? Do I have any intention of turning in before it’s technically the following day? If so, what’s keeping me from doing it? Do I need more of a routine? Do I have needs that aren’t being met during the day, and I’m staying up late to try to meet them (by blogging and reading and hanging out on Facebook)? Should I try scooching bedtime all the way back to 10:30 and forget about this “moderation” thing? If not, why do I keep saying I’m going to? Is it because I really think I need more sleep, or because I think I ought to want to go to bed earlier?
This situation reminds me of when I quit smoking almost 13 years ago. I tried for a couple of years, first giving myself a daily cigarette limit, then making myself wait 10 minutes between when I had a craving and when I actually lit up, then going cold turkey, then moving to a different state (I would have done this anyway, but I thought a complete change of scenery and social life would be a good time to break the habit). Each time I went back to my old habits, I suspected that it was because that’s what I really wanted to do. I wasn’t ready to quit smoking, and when I was, it would be easy. In the end, I all of a sudden started becoming ill whenever I smoked, and it was easy to stop making myself ill by quitting smoking. I also stopped being able to tolerate caffeine at that same time. Funny…the reaction to smoking and caffeine was very much like my reaction to alcohol and sugar recently. I hadn’t connected those until now. I wonder what the heck that’s all about.
At any rate, I’ll need to come to some kind of perspective shift on the bedtime thing or just drop the idea. Or I could just wait until staying up late starts making me physically ill. I’m not sure that’s going to happen, though.
Maybe what I need is to work on those mindfulness practices a little more devotedly than I have been these past few days. Maybe that would bring some clarity.
Imperfect Happiness 