Today was a good to great day, not that my life is terribly interesting. Lately, I have been so stressed and the anxiety sensitivity that I get from being sick is an aggravant, and the caffeine loaded pills I had to take to function against a sinus headache with the cold weather system sitting over us isn't helping. I have many nights since Thanksgiving up and wide awake. Not the
I'm alert, conscious kind of awake, but the
I could get up and drywall the garage and oh didn't we want to regrout and seal the bathroom tile kind of awake. My husband doesn't sleep well if I am not in bed, nor can he sleep with the TV on or light on. That effectively ruled out reading, movies, TV (although for the record, I know that I should watch TV if I'm trying to get back to sleep. TV is a stimulant. /digression). So I'm awake at various points of the evening having a conversation with my brain. They go something like this:
Me: crap. Can't sleep. OK. Must focus on breathing.
Brain: Breathing. OK. inoutinoutinout. You know this reminds me that I need to do more yoga, or exercise.
M: Yeah, whatever. Breathing.
B: But I had this great idea for a new schedule. But that would have to work around writing.
M: No writing. I have other things to do first, like work and sleep. Go away.
B: OK, but speaking of work the secret santa thing isn't going so well, is it? And then there's the lab presentation.
Here the brain cheerfully wanders off into endless details and I get sucked in.M (looking at clock): half hour. This sucks. Ok back to breathing.
B: but if we could just solve this problem we could sleep.
Sucked in again. M: no back to breathing. inoutinoutinout.
This goes on forever. Elizabeth Gilbert writes about this exact conversation better than I did. And in the months of self discovery leading up to these recent days, I understand that I can't trust my brain. Generally it lies to me wholesale. When it does tell the truth, it does so only to get me sucked in so that it can lie to some more. I've decided that my brain is better used at places like work, where analytical thinking is needed and useful. It does me no good for most other situations and, therefore, I have decided to limit it's participation. It has other ideas however.
So this morning, at the ripe hour of 4am, it started in again. So instead of trying to distract it, or repress it, I figured you want to be up, we'll be up. Over the next hour, the presentation that is due next month just flowed out of me and onto the paper. All the little scraps of information fell into place and the picture clarified. The outline was effortless on my part. By the time I finished, I was on time for getting my morning started.
At work, I was able to be able to go over all of my outline with my boss and he agreed that I had it all put together, with only minor modifications. And the next experiments were sketched out. And I was able to go over my mid year review. That gave me the feedback I needed to feel more secure in that I was working out for him and meeting expectations.
I left work, was able to find the secret santa gift I was looking for, try on the dress I ordered from Ann Taylor Loft (it fit), and found another game for my husband to consider for game day. I haven't had a day like this in a long time. Does wonders for the sanity, I tell you.
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