#oneaday Day 222: Dawn of the Second Day

Second day in a row of successfully getting up at 7.30, getting out of the house and having a little walk down to the shop. It was a little bit harder to successfully achieve this today, but I was expecting this. As outlined yesterday, my dreams were doing their best to pull me back into sleep, but I recognised them as being pointless (I was dreaming about Fire Emblem, and if I want to play Fire Emblem I can just go downstairs) and managed to get myself out of bed.

The fact that I was woken up by my phone ringing at 7.28 also probably helped. I was concerned that the call would be Bad News, as phone calls at vaguely unsociable hours tend to be, but it was, in fact, just a wrong number offering one "Jenny" a supply teaching position.

I have done supply teaching before; having to get up early and wait for a phone call like that is the absolute worst, because if you do get one you inevitably then have to get ready as fast as possible and get to whatever hellhole of a school you've been assigned to before the beginning of the school day. (Of course, one might say if you were reliant on such phone calls for your income, you should probably get up and get ready a little earlier on the assumption that you will get one; the worst that can happen is you don't get one and will have put on your "nice clothes" for nothing.)

I'm hoping this whole little routine will lead to some other incremental improvements in other areas of life. I actually feel like I slept a little better than usual last night, and eventually what I would like to do is start integrating a little more exercise than just a quick walk to the shop into the morning routine. As I have learned in the past, though, making such lifestyle changes is best handled gradually rather than trying to do too much, too soon. So I'm just concentrating on what has historically been the "difficult bit" — getting up — and celebrating my successes in that area first. Everything else can come later.

Anyway, I'm up and about now and there's still a full ten minutes before I actually need to start work. So that's nice. Here's hoping today is at least vaguely stimulating and entertaining. Knowing what's coming later, it should be fun, all being well, though I'm sure the wonder that is social media will find something to piss and moan about, as happens every day. Letting humanity at large comment online was a mistake. But you know this. You've read my posts, and many of them were most certainly a mistake.

Oh, also it's my brother's birthday today, so if you see him about, be sure to wish him happy birthday.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 221: Little success

Reader, I did it. My alarm went off at 7.30 and I got up almost immediately. I add the qualifier because I lay there and listened to the radio for about 5 minutes, then got up and had a piss and seriously considered going back to bed for another half an hour on the justification that "the sun wasn't fully up yet" so going outside right then wouldn't be as beneficial as it would be when the day had properly started.

But I pushed through those thoughts, got dressed instead of getting back into bed, then went out to the little Tesco and got myself a coffee and a pastry. Then I came back and enjoyed them both. They both seemed to taste particularly great, perhaps because I wasn't in a rush to enjoy them before starting work, or perhaps because of the light exercise I'd just done, or perhaps simply because I hadn't treated myself to such things for a while. Anyway, they were good.

I have the yawns a little bit because this was, after all, quite a bit earlier than I usually roll out of bed, but like I said yesterday, it supposedly takes about three days to convince your body to fall into a new routine. I was actually surprised how easy it was to get out of bed at 7.30(ish); evidently that time is a good match for my existing circadian rhythms so hopefully that will just get easier.

I'll tell you one big reason I've always had difficulty getting out of bed in the morning: it's because of dreams. For some reason, I always seem to have the most vivid dreams first thing in the morning, almost immediately before I'm supposed to be getting up. And there are occasions where I'll wake up, still have memory of the dream and feel like I "have" to go back and "finish" the dream, even though that's an impossibility.

But there have been multiple occasions where my brain has felt that it is of critical importance that I finish the dream I was having, otherwise… you know what, I don't actually know what it thinks the consequences will be. Because there aren't any. A dream is just a dream; as enjoyable and interesting as they can be, they don't actually exist and they don't have any bearing on your real life, so prioritising them over actually living in the moment is, from a rational perspective, very silly.

As we all know, though, the human brain is prone to fits of irrationality at times, particularly if it's under any sort of stress or not feeling its best for one reason or another. And so, yes, there absolutely have been times where my brain has wanted to prioritise a fun or interesting dream over the drabness of everyday life.

No more, though! I will get up at a sensible hour, giving me enough time to have a nice chilled out morning before work starts, and this will be a Healthy Habit that will lead to other improvements! 2025 is the year.

Probably. Maybe.

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#oneaday Day 220: Morning person

I'm not a morning person. I can get out of bed early when I absolutely have to (to catch a flight, say), but left to my own devices, I will happily just lie comatose in my bed until an embarrassing hour. I will note that it's not quite as bad as during 2010, The Worst Year Of My Life, when I was staying up until 5am on Second Life and then not even waking up until 5pm the next day, but it's still… challenging to get out of bed at a reasonable hour, particularly at weekends.

I've been reading around and watching some YouTube videos in an attempt to fix this, because as nice as staying in bed can be, I do actually want to try and make a bit better use of my day — because if nothing else, I think it will probably make me feel better, too. There are few things worse for feelings of perpetual non-specific anxiety than getting up moments before you're supposed to start working… although annoyingly enough, it's often those feelings of perpetual non-specific anxiety that make me want to stay in bed.

Thus far, the chief pieces of advice that seem to recur frequently are as follows:

Get up when your alarm goes off. (This is the difficult bit.)
Get out into natural light as soon as you can. (This assumes you have succeeded at step 1.)
Get some exercise shortly after getting up. (Likewise.)
Try and delay your caffeine intake a bit. (Challenging, but also agreed to not necessarily be essential.)
Get some food into you, preferably something which releases energy gradually.
Get to bed at a reasonable time at night. (Doesn't have to be early, just a sensible time.)

Supposedly it takes about three days to convince your body that you're starting a new routine, which is all to do with your circadian rhythms. The first two days are almost certainly going to be excruciatingly difficult, but it's important to stick with them. And, as time goes on, this (in theory) gets easier.

I've already made a sort of step towards improving my morning routine, in that I've given up using my phone as an alarm and instead got a clock radio. I find it somehow more conducive to waking up without feeling like complete shite, perhaps because it's not just the same sound every day that you eventually come to resent. The actual getting out of bed when it first sounds is still the challenging bit, but that's the "wall" you have to push through in order to achieve anything.

So from tomorrow, I'm going to attempt to push through that wall and make some improvements. I've got my alarm set early (7.30am — I start work at 9) and I'm going to do my absolute damnedest to get up straight away, get dressed and then go straight outside. Not only that, I'm going to walk to the nearby Tesco, get myself some coffee and something nice (but not overly awful for me) for breakfast. That would seem to tick off several of the steps above in one fell swoop. Sure, walking to Tesco isn't exactly a "workout", but most of the stuff I've read and watched over the last couple of days suggests that you don't need your morning exercise to be a full-on workout, just moving a bit. And a walk of about a quarter of a mile each way would, I'd say, qualify as "just moving a bit".

When COVID hit, a lot of us introverts joked about how nice it was to have state approval for staying inside all day. But over the last couple of years in particular, I've started to really appreciate how important it is to just go outside and get some air sometimes. Doesn't have to involve interacting with other people or doing anything adventurous, just, as the kids say, touch some grass.

So that's the plan from tomorrow. Let's see if I'm able to actually stick to it.

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