Day 40: Recalibrations

Day 40. If this blog challenge was as old in years as it is in days it would currently be going through a mid-life crisis, buying an expensive sports car and getting a tattoo. But it's not, and blogs can't get finance for luxury road vehicles, and they don't have any skin that a tattoo would go on, so why don't you shut up?

I've been feeling myself slipping back into bad habits. It takes energy and awareness to keep ingraining the grooves of new habits, and mostly I've been too busy and tired for either of late.

I've noticed myself pushing bedtime from 2am to ten or so minutes later, and then more like 2:30, and then more like 3. Consequently I've been allowing myself to sleep in until 10:30, or 11, or beyond. I've been on a string of closes recently, coming home around 1:30, and while when I started this challenge I was very good at just getting a glass of water, doing some stretches and getting into bed, the past few weeks I've been sitting up on my PC or phone, reading Twitter, watching Netflix or Youtube, wallowing in the empty lethargic depression that has characterised so much of my recent life.

I guess I've been feeling sad, a lack of connection, a frustration with the meaninglessness of work, and my go-to method for so long for dealing with that sadness has been to sort of lie back into it, like a lukewarm bath, distracting myself with screens and noises and colour. Feel sad, stay up for too long looking at crap in an attempt to hide from that sadness, wake up late into yet more sadness. Repeat ad nauseam.

I'm like the cardboard VR headset I've been playing with, its horizon drifting inexorably off on one side. Not enough to notice in the moment, but look back after an extended session and you find your centre-point has swung round wildly from where you began.

So I'm just going to re-centre myself. I'm not sure what else I can do. A more balanced gyroscope would help, one less prone to outside influence -- but for the moment, while that's still being honed in the lab, I'll have to stick with regular recalibration of my internal instruments. Bring myself back, again, and again, and again.

So last night I got through the door at 1:35am and I pushed myself up the stairs, brushed my teeth, stripped to my boxers, did some gentle yoga poses (namaste), sat for five minutes of meditation, then got into bed and read a few pages of my book before closing the cover and lying down and turning out the light.

This morning I did not want to get up, nothing in me wanted to get up, but I forced myself through the fog into a sitting position and drank my bottle of water and read a few more pages of my book, and then when enough brain cells had come awake I got into the shower and started another day.

It's not glamorous, it's not exciting, but it is the necessary work to keep me from sliding too far off course.