Category: self-care

Trying Something Crazy

Matt

My wife recently read a book called “The 5am Miracle,” which she summed up as, “You can get a lot done if you get up really early.” Obvious, right? Sometimes we need to read a book about something obvious before we give it a shot. Does anyone else do this?

The book doesn’t use 5am as the magical wakey time that works for everyone — the idea is simply to do some stuff in the morning before your obligations kick in. This week, I’m thinking I’ll just go all-in and set my alarm for 5.

Currently, my average day goes something like this:

  • 7am: Wake up
  • 8am: Begin work day
  • 4:30pm: End work day; begin sitting on couch, possible nap
  • 6pm: Maybe go work on something for a bit, like writing or drawing
  • 7:30pm: Begin TV or video games, maybe.
  • 9pm: Decide not to go to the gym; tomorrow night?
  • 11:30: Get ready for bed; stare at tablet or phone
  • 12 or 1am: Fall asleep

This week, I’m aiming to get up at 5am and go straight to the gym. Once I’m home and showered, I’ll have time to write for a bit before I start working. Depending on how long I work out and write, I may shift my work day back a bit, or maybe just find another thing to do in the morning.

But man, 5am sounds brutal right now. We’ll see how well it works and if I can stick to it. I’ll write about the experience next week.

Self-Honesty: I Don’t Care

Matt

“I don’t have time.”

This is one of the many phrases that English-speakers have developed for saying “no” without actually saying “no”. For whatever reason, we as a society have agreed that a simple, “No thanks” is too flippant — borderline aggressive, even — and requires a further explanation that implies, “I would, if only…”

“Sorry, I already have plans that night.”
“I can’t — I haven’t slept well and feel like shit.”

The worst part is when we internalize this idea and start lying to ourselves about why we’re not doing things we say we want to do. My personal lie, for many years, has been “I don’t have time.”

I want to get better at drawing, but I don’t have time.
I’d love to record more Christmas music, but I don’t have time.
I want to read this stack of books, but I don’t have time.

There’s a resentment that comes from believing reality is structured specifically to prevent me from engaging in everything that catches my fancy. Time is a finite resource, but my fascination is boundless! Surely the greatest tragedy in life is that I won’t be able to watch everything available on Netflix in my lifetime.

Recently, I learned a magical incantation that reshaped reality to my benefit: “I don’t care.”

Look at this stack of books… eh, I don’t care.
I keep hearing that I should watch Orange is the New Black… I don’t care.
I still haven’t tried all of the games I acquired through Humble Bundle… I don’t care.

Revolutionary, I know.

Like “no, thanks,” the phrase “I don’t care” seems to have negative connotations. I get it — it can feel judgmental when someone shrugs and admits they don’t care for something you feel strongly about. It’s certainly not a phrase I’m about to deploy against other people.

But, when I use it on myself, it cuts through the nonsense and shows me where I’ve been lying to myself. Sometimes, saying “I don’t care” rings false. Over the summer, I tried to tell myself I didn’t care about working on my drawing skills. It backfired — I realized I do care; I care enough that for the last six months I’ve made time to draw almost every day.

However, I was getting stressed out about the fact that I wasn’t writing music. I love writing music! It’s amazing! One of my favorite things! Why was that particular interest gathering dust if I loved it so much? Cautiously, I tried out my incantation: I don’t care about making music.

It rang mostly true, but I had to amend it to “I don’t care about making music right now.”

That felt great. It felt like giving myself permission to focus on something I was excited about without feeling guilty for not doing everything that I was interested in.

On top of the mental improvement, learning to say, “I don’t care” has made it possible to delete a ton of stuff from my Netflix queue.

Adventures in Mental Illness: Indecision

Matt

This scene has played out hundreds, possibly thousands, of times throughout my life. Between 2006 and 2013, however, it was especially frequent.

It’s been a long day, and I’m glad to take off my shoes and flop facedown on the bed for ten or fifteen minutes while I wait for my wife to finish making dinner. Today she took one look at my face and made the executive decision to delay food and let me sleep for an hour.

When I drag myself out of bed, I feel… not better, but less noisy. Instead of flooding my consciousness with detailed memories of all my failures, my brain has settled on two or three to play in a loop. After I eat, if I’m lucky, I’ll be focused on a single failure that will drive me to do something creative.

“Failure” is not entirely accurate because it implies that I tried to do something and wasn’t successful. The things that my brain likes to throw in my face are the times when I wanted to try something, but didn’t. Like when I was researching fiction magazines and found one that seemed like a perfect fit for something I’d written. I read their submission guidelines over and over. I revised my story a few times. Then, I never actually submitted it.

Tonight, I will write something.

Tomorrow night, however, I’ll be dwelling on five things while my food digests. I didn’t move out of state to play music with my friends. I defaulted to an easy degree. I didn’t maintain my friendships. I don’t practice my guitar enough. I never figured out how to work with watercolor pencils.

When that happens, I don’t act. I sit on the couch, marathoning old Power Rangers episodes, wishing someone else will tell me what to do because I can’t do it all. It’s too much. I suck. And now I’ve wasted another perfectly good evening.

Thankfully, this hasn’t happened to the same degree since I’ve been on medication. In fact, the experience is barely comparable. Now, when I find myself struggling to figure out what to do with my free time, it feels like I have a ton of opportunities to do cool new things. Guilt doesn’t enter the equation — I might note that my guitar skills are getting rusty, but I’m really excited about the progress I’m making with my drawing. My poor blog has been neglected, but this story idea is so fun to work on! I’ll get around to the other stuff eventually, sure, but I want to ride this wave as long as I can.