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In March, I started on another mission to get myself to bed earlier. If you have been reading this newsletter for a while, then you know I have basically been trying to put myself to bed earlier for most of the pandemic, and failing miserably. In desperate need of an adultier adult, whom does not exist in my household apparently (just a whole lot of revenge bedtime procrastination, for almost two years — yikes). For some context, I have had no good excuse not to be getting to bed before, say, midnight most nights — I don’t have kids, unless you count the lazy gal pictured above who most definitely gets more rest than I do, and an office hours-style job, but was staying awake simply because the pandemic and life stress have turned my internal clock upside down.
Anyways, last month I decided enough was enough, and decided to recommit to my quest for an earlier bedtime, this time with renewed vigor and….arts and crafts.
Um, yes. That’s right, my friends — I got out some markers and construction paper (leftover from an early pandemic activity when I tried my hand at cutting out colorful hearts to tape onto our living room window) and created a calendar of sorts as a tool to get my butt to bed at more reasonable time: a chart with the days I wanted to be in bed before 11pm and circles under each day to color in if I was successful. I also made a similar one for a parallel attempt to coax myself out of bed earlier in the mornings. Lest you think I had a lightbulb moment coming up with this, I should note I didn’t invent this chart/circles system — I was inspired by writer Olivia Muenter who has shared her journey to becoming a morning person and a similar goal-reaching process. The neon construction paper, however, was all my own.
At first I felt a little silly about making what is essentially a report card for myself — a grown ass woman — on bright pink construction paper and taping it to the side of my closet. I also realized, though, that the tactics I had previously been employing — aka just relying on my conscience and good ol’ self-discipline — were clearly not working; it was time to try something new. As a perfectionist and Virgo, having to get graded (albeit by myself) on my progress seemed like a sure-fire way to encourage action, so I figured I’d give it a shot at least for the month.
And, you know what? It worked! For March, I tried to simply get to bed by or before 11pm Sundays through Thursdays. While I wasn’t suddenly perfect at hitting my bedtime goal every evening, I did pretty well… enough so that I felt confident enough to push my bedtime goal to before 10:30pm for April.
Admittedly I’m still struggling with getting up earlier — I would love to be waking up at least 30 minutes to an hour earlier than I currently am most weekdays — but I did at least create a smoother pre-work morning routine for myself over the last couple of months. That’s something, right?
Now, the success I’ve found thus far in refreshing my bedtime routine and creating some new habits was certainly facilitated by having that brightly colored construction paper staring me down from my bedroom with its sad, empty circles, but I think it was a bit deeper than that. The circles and visible progress report were the impetus I needed to take my self-care and personal needs more seriously. A visible reminder that I was letting myself down when I chose to lay on the couch for “just one more episode” of a mindless show that was most certainly still going to be available to binge-watch tomorrow or the next day. [Note: mindless TV watching can absolutely be self-care, but in my case, it wasn’t.] It gave me the excuse I needed, I suppose, to force myself to close my phone or turn off Netflix, and to pour myself into bed at a more reasonable hour; it showed me that I was allowing myself to be the obstacle in my own path. I found myself suddenly feeling empowered to decide my day was, in fact, done, to pay attention to the clock and make sure I was getting ready for bed in enough time to meet my goal. It helped me strengthen my self-discipline and internal motivation (something I have in heaps in most other areas of my life but apparently not as related to prioritizing sleep), even if my spouse wasn’t yet ready for bedtime himself, and even if I felt like I didn’t have anything I needed to necessarily be up for early the next day.
Why it took these little circles to remind me I could execute this type of discipline, I have no idea, but sometimes we need to try something new to break us out of routines that no longer serve us or reset our habits. Sometimes we need something to shake us out of a funk, or to force us to reexamine why we do the things we do and consider trying something new. As a book I read recently so beautifully put it: what got you here won’t get you there.
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I hope you have a lovely weekend, friends, and the sunshine is making its way into your neck of the woods. And if you’re looking for something to watch, I can’t not recommend “White Hot,” about Abercrombie and Fitch in the early 2000s; I know it hit home for this millennial. 😹 (The pop culture podcast Be There in Five, which I love, has a great episode on them too, if you’re feeling really ambitious.)
Thanks for reading!
Joelle
I so relate to this. I am stuck in a loop of work and other obligations that are keeping me from projects and workouts I want to do. So I stay up late to do them sometimes, but then don’t get enough rest. But if I don’t have that time, I also feel restless. So basically I can’t establish any regular routine. I am going to try my best to figure it out. I feel like a colored paper tracker would help me too!