End-cycle Reorientation (drugs optional)
According to Matthew Good, a CD with cricket-sounds on it will put you to sleep amazingly fast. Mr. Good’s not polyphasic, but he is an awesome musician and he once had T-shirts made that said "I hear Matt Good is a real asshole", so I think he deserves honorary credibility anyway. (Being married to a musician and self-proclaimed bastard probably contributes to some bias on my part, but that’s the beauty of having your own chunk of th’ Internet: Plenty of room for your biases.)
To say that my schedule fell apart over the holidays would be to understate it along the lines of "the Titanic had emergency-preparedness issues". But I’ve gotten through okay, fitting naps in when I need them, managing to somehow not be tired in spite of downright silly amounts of random running-around and panicking. (Unfortunately, several older members of my family picked this holiday season to commence exit-procedures from Planet Earth, which basically means they’re having a nice relaxing time sleeping all day and trying out new and exciting drugs, while the rest of us run around trying to find the money for plane tickets, lawyers and funeral homes. And naturally in exchange for all this, we got cards with $5 in them for Xmas. Is being old a hell of a racket or what?)
But, now there’s a blessed three whole days off work, which I plan to use to get the schedule back in order, and make some adjustment for the new year besides. It’s funny how, over the course of a year, enough will change that by the end of the year, I need to adjust my schedule so everything fits nicely again. Examples: Now I’m not in school; now I have a 6a.m. kungfu class once a week; now I work from home once a week; now I have a book club and other standing commitments to go out that I didn’t have before…and suchforth. I now know from experience that once I explicitly schedule these things in around my sleep and other tasks, I’ll feel much, much better and get much more done. I’ve actually done this Schedule Reorientation every year that I’ve been polyphasic (possibly more often once or twice), but this is the first time I think I’ve realized that it’s going to keep being necessary, Hail Eris Hail Yes. ;)
My goals for the next year are to keep regular study-times (whether or not I’m bound for grad school this fall), keep regular writing-time, add some cardio to my exercise routine and get back on the dots-counting wagon (did anybody else find marking one’s hands inconvenient? I did, but I haven’t thought of an alternative yet…), and to find a way to squeeze in regular music practice - this is hard because everything I play is loud and there are lots of people in my house who are prone to inconvenient things like sleeping. Dratted hibernators!!
Anyway, Merry Endings to everyone, Happy Beginnings to Come!
Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.