It’s 3am, I must be lonely. Nah, I’m just awake. Again. Because I woke up at 2:56am after going to bed at midnight.
Well, since I started recording my cycles a week or so ago. I’m following the 10-3-2-1 thing per my instructors as an attempt to assist my sleep hygiene. Except ever since I’ve started this, which is like a week? Two weeks? Ugh time lately…I’ve been going to bed at midnight and then waking up at exactly 2:56am on the dot every night. (This could also be my natural rhythm telling me this is when I need to wake up, but let’s explore it from the 10-3-2-1 and IPSRT angle.)
Basically, it’s like this:
10 hours prior to bed = no more caffeine.
This is actually nice. I am kind of a weirdo in that I enjoy the slight bitterness of decaf and the slightly too strong flavor of instant, so I bought instant decaf. If I want, I make a sort of mocha out of it with a spoon full of hot chocolate mix. This gives me a super immersive soycaf drink to sip when I’m in cyberpunk, sci-fi, or Shadowrun writing mode. But the super nice thing about this is that I am completely restful by the time I go to bed. I also believe this really helps my morning energy levels and makes morning coffee that much more effective.
3 hours prior = no food or alcohol
That’s also easy, but this is something to consider — being hypoglycemic, I think I need to adjust the food timing to at least an hour prior to bed. I don’t have to make a full course meal, what usually helps a LOT is a packet of flavored tuna — like Ginger Sesame or Spicy Thai — and then add a wee bit of mayo and a few crackers, and I am golden. I think I will make this the “final hour” snack that I have with my puzzle books. I don’t consume alcohol anymore, so that part’s perfect.
Two hours prior = no more work or social interactions
I’ve given myself permission to go full mindlessness as of this point, opting to switch to an easy game (or easy to do game) with little to no distractions. My favorite game to wind down with is Guild Wars 2 on my tiny laptop. Since I know so many people who play now, and I am trying to avoid everyone, I’ve repurposed an alt account and am playing to enjoy the music of the game, enjoy the nostalgia of the storylines, and gather crafting materials. I also have been defaulting to SWTOR more, but that’s something I’m actively engaged in as I’ve only done the base storyline once, and that was 150 years ago when the game first came out. (It’s like WOW, ESO, and GW2 — they all came out last century, so 150 years ago is relative.)
Socially, I’ve probably innately pushed the “no social interactions” way earlier than that, because well…I am an introvert. I’m not the shy kind, I’m the “super short social battery” kind and need a lot of time to recharge. I love people, and thrive on short bursts of interactions. If it’s one person I am comfortable with, that could turn into an hours-long super deep conversation, and I’m here for that, but not when I’m busy hailing every mfer that shows up on my timelines. Truth be told, there’s probably 2 people on the planet who I could have these convos with, but due to life and how busy we are, it rarely happens.
I think the social part of the 10-3-2-1 has been the most beneficial, because I also notice that the avenues of being afraid of… (laundry list incoming) inadequacy, reactions, validation, unexpected debates, people unfollowing, etc, have all but closed. I’ve been exhausting myself with the whole relevance thing (note a common theme in my posts from recent to when I first started documenting my journey in April 2024 has been about feeling like nobody cares and how alone/lonely I am, when the truth is most likely that I’ve worked myself beyond said social battery trying to meet the laundry list and be relevant and simply cannot socialize any better than I’ve been doing, which is getting horrendous results), and even in the short time I’ve been doing the 10-3-2-1 for sleep hygiene/learning my rhythm, I’m already noticing how much I appreciate the time away from everyone. I even have more time to focus on writing.
One hour prior = no more screen time
I tend to fade off of screens at this point. I keep GW2 on for the music, but let myself switch energy to a puzzle book to let my brain finish using the rest of it’s free energy. I have a stack of these books: crosswords, sudoku, word finds, variety, logic puzzles, fill ins, I’m sure there’s more. So I just grab one and start working it. I think it’s going to be best for me to add a cup of calming tea here and maybe some water to sip, because waking up at the same time (literally the same time) every night being parched and having to run to the restroom is no fun. I end up having to make something to drink (or tap water — which apartment water has zero flavor — I wonder if this is why UK folks call these flats — because the water tastes flat, hold on let me slap my knee right quick) and then having to front load my brain with something stimulating (like writing this post) so I can wind down again. If I don’t do those things, I end up tossing and turning until I finally go to sleep 2 hours later. Tea would help both with hydration and to keep the calm going, as well as (personal experience) keeping the need to take a tinkie winkie at bay until I wake up in the morning. Seems counterintuitive, but something to drink before bed does seem to do that.
Migraine Notes
I think it’s out of my system, finally. Holy shit, folks, don’t have migraines. I have an eye doc appointment next week (soonest I could get in) to see if I need actual Lasik on my eye. I’ve been ignoring it as just being dry eye or something, but apparently it’s real. This is kind of a shocker, because when it’s not malfunctioning, I have documented 20/4 vision, as in I can see clearly at 100 feet what most people can see at 20. The changes in my left eye vision as of late have been easy to pass off as dryness or allergies, because I’m just not used to having bad eyesight at all. Honestly, this has probably been a years-long problem, and I’ve never really processed or addressed it for reasons until the migraines started about a year ago, and have progressively gotten worse.
I have very good hearing, too. this one time, they played the highest pitch (I guess the highest pitch available to human ears) and I winced like i could hear it but couldn’t register it. I asked if I could cup the ear cans, and he smiled and said yes. I knew he was up to something. so my job was of course to raise a hand where each sound was coming from, and I stared him right in the eye and put my finger on the top of my head in the back and slightly to the right of center/back of head. I said “here?” and he just died cackling laughing. I was correct. He said “that’s insane.” I got the best hearing out of everyone. That was 2 years ago.
He said it wasn’t “dog level hearing” but it was super fringe for humans to hear that well or at least perceive. Then he asked me if I’m one of those who could hear a police or fire siren a few blocks away and tell you the street it’s on and house it’s in front of, and I was like “yes, several times.”
Which would also explain how I’m reacting so acutely to slight changes like with my eye going wonky or how tired and dizzy I feel with nervous system changes. Subtle changes = holy sensory failure, batman. Personally, I know it’s genetics (my father was fine-tuned as well), but I think my reaction to the changes comes from being hypervigilant all the time and being up in my late 40s starting to fatigue more easily.
Daily Logs — slight adjustment on some things!
I was going to document a daily log of what we’re learning, but one of the instructors said it best: everything we’re teaching is readily available on the internet, but you don’t get the same training and therapeutic methods for use from online documentation. So…if folks want to know all of the stuff I’m learning, google used to be your friend — I’d recommend Duck Duck Go nowadays — just get a therapist if you want to see the how and why of it. I’m two days into PHP and I’m already learning some details that the internet and self-directed learning does not teach. I’ve had my psych for what…two months now? And my coach is a major blessing, but actual therapy has been the bee’s knees. LOL I like it so much I have a whole team of psychiatrists and therapists and have turned it into a part time job for the next few months.
So what I’ll do is just write about what interested me the most about the day, how I interacted with things, and what I’m learning about myself. Like today, at lunch, we had air, land, and sea bites (fish, steak, and chicken nuggets – not minced together, but nuggets from each category) with mac and cheese and some seasoned potato wedges, and they made the restaurant style ranch to go with it. I got two of each. With that was a side salad and a glass of tea. I felt the desire to cry, but kept telling myself it was okay. I very much enjoyed it. They do have vegan options, but I was really all about the nuggies. I thought about something though, I never want to cry when presented with lo mein. Lo mein is more like “give me the sticks, I’m good.” I never feel bad for it.
MSC Book Notes
I did read the introduction, which kind of belayed that feeling of dread that I’ve been having with it. Because I often feel that I’m just not worth the effort on some of this stuff. Most of this stuff. You get told that enough, and eventually a lot of it just burrows in and takes up what feels like permanent residence. Which is where I am now convinced I try to look for that validation from others. My whole life has been searching for someone to give more of a damn about me than I do so that I can finally give a damn about myself. And I never find people like that. I meet people who care, but only from their capacity. I find people who are just the sweetest, kindest people you’ll ever meet, but again, they can only care and be kind and sweet from their capacity. These are…and I hate to say it, but these are mom-level needs. My mom never got to be a mom to me because of what was going on. There was a time where even she started to be “one of them” (referring to everyone who ever harmed me) because it was easier for her to register my situation and needs from her capacity…while dealing with the same traumas I was dealing with, but from a different perspective. Remember, “those two” were related to her, too. Most of the people who harmed me knew her as well.
Just reading through the introduction felt like a little bit of a blanket. Seeing quotes on the back from Sharon Salzberg, Tara Brach, and Rick Hansen really set the tone, as I’ve read their books in the past trying to figure out how to apply their words while actively living in a place that aggressively denied me the ability to do so. Now that I am free of that and beginning to see that I alone am stopping myself, and being blessed by the universe to hear someone I’ve high regard for say “I was there once in a way. I have used this book, it worked wonders for me, you should do it too” (paraphrased, and not directly at me), just keeps pushing the hope button that getting serious about all of this will work out in the end. I just gotta do it — and do it for me. I know, I literally said in a recent post I was going to do it for Sam, and the intention was until I could feel better about myself, they could be a stand-in, but I need to be there — even in my current state, I need to be the one I am working on. And I can’t work on me if I’m still dedicating my work to someone else.
Anyway, I’m going back to bed, it’s almost 5am. RIP my schedule again. I’ll be fine.
