Tag Archives: sleep

The power of rest

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A few days ago I felt a tickle in my throat. I have no idea if it’s just a placebo or if it actually helps, but when I feel a sore throat coming on, I start sucking chewable vitamin C likes they are throat lozenges and it seems to help. But this time I did something else, I spent the weekend napping and relaxing.

This has to be the most amount of time I’ve spent doing almost nothing in years. It was in no way a typical weekend. I had two 2+hour naps, and I spend most of the last 2 days horizontal. And I think I’m almost ready for bed. Normally a day like that would leave me wired before bed and unable to sleep. But my body needed the rest and I feel like I’ll fall asleep easily tonight.

The difference compared to other times like this is that this time I actually listened to my body. For so long I’ve tried to muscle through feeling run down. But this weekend I took my vitamins, I ate when I was hungry, and I rested. I usually do anywhere from 7,000 to 12,000 steps in a day. According to my watch, I took 713 steps today. If this was a regular thing, it would probably be a problem… but this is exactly what I needed, and I’m feeling good that I actually listened to my body and took the rest it required.

I’m ready to return to my full routine in high gear tomorrow!

A disturbance in the force

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I’ve been feeling ‘off’ on top of issues getting a good night’s sleep, and that has thrown my schedule out of whack. Compounding this, I just joined a gym and the just over 30 minutes commute time to get there and back has thrown off my morning routine. I already get up at 5am and I’m not pushing this to 4:30 to compensate. So, I need to readjust my schedule. On top of this, I’m just 2 days away from winter vacation so my entire routine is about to get upturned anyway.

So what gives way to this? When there is a major disruption in the smooth running of my routines and habits, what breaks? Well, if I can help it… nothing. No, I won’t skip a day writing. No, I’ll never skip 2 days in a row working out. No, I won’t accept that this is a crazy time and I’ll just get back to my schedule when there is time.

That said, I’m probably going to end up moving something to the evenings. I actually have given up a puzzle I do each morning called Strands, and I don’t do Wordle first thing in the morning anymore. But more importantly, I won’t let scheduling be the reason that I don’t get my personal goals done each day.

I’ve said before that it’s the hard days that make you stick to a habit, but it’s also the way you handle your habits when your schedule doesn’t cooperate. When there is a metaphorical disturbance in the force, and things are not as they should be, these are the times habits are made or lost. Because habits are easy when they are neatly stacked into the routine of the day. But take away that routine and suddenly the habits take a lot more effort.

I guess I’ll just have to ‘use the force’… of momentum, of expectation, and of commitment to make sure that while my schedule and routines are totally disrupted, my habits will consistently prevail.

Power naps

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I sat down to write, put some relaxing music on, and fell asleep before a word was put on the page. I’ve had a lot going on personally and the net effect is that I’m not sleeping well at night. I’m not a great sleeper to begin with and so when I get like this my nights are rough.

Compounding this is the fact that I have a new watch that monitors my sleep. I know this will become a helpful tool eventually, but now it’s more like paralysis by analysis. Seeing my sleep results in the morning only adds to my stress about how crappy my sleep was. Not enough deep sleep, not enough REM, and both too many restless moments as well as too much time awake during the night.

The good news, it’s the weekend and I can take some naps to catch up. I think my body was designed to live in a place with siestas. Power naps revitalize me. I passed out for 20 minutes and feel better. But if I’m honest, I could easily sleep for another 20-30 minutes right now.

…And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Recalibration time

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I bought a new watch and when setting it up, I messed up. I got on the treadmill to do a walk and it asked me to calibrate by sharing the distance I walked. I took the distance in miles and converted it to kilometres. Except after recording 3 walks that have been recorded as runs it has become obvious to me that the calibration should have been in miles, and I never should have made the conversation.

What it comes down to is human error. 100% my fault, and the watch settings probably even asked for the distance in miles. But now I’ve got to figure out how to recalibrate my pace.

Something else I’m looking to recalibrate is my sleep patterns, my watch tells me that I don’t get a lot of deep sleep in a night. That’s part of the recalibrating, but hopefully the other part is the watch learning more about me. It suggests that I get 9 hours sleep to be fully recovered. I don’t remember the last decade where 9 hours sleep was something I could achieve… not just because I can’t schedule it, but because I simply can’t sleep that long. Any time I go past 8 hours I’m up whether I want to be or not.

All that said, the watch isn’t even a week old, so maybe I’ll just do a hard reset and start over. This time I’ll pay a little more attention when I’m calibrating it.

My new watch

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I bought myself a new watch. This is the first time that I’m going to be regularly wearing a watch in over 20 years. I chose the Garmin Venu 4, for a few reasons, mostly related to health tracking. I would have chosen the Apple Watch, but I want sleep data and my family members all have the Apple Watch and end up having to charge it every night. The Venu 4 has a 12 day battery life, and even if I use it on full brightness, I’m sure it will last well over a week, which is something I really wanted.

Right now I feel like I bought a race car and I’m only driving it in a school zone. This watch has so many capabilities that I’m not yet using. That’s because I got it late yesterday afternoon and I had a dinner function to go to, so I really haven’t had time to play with it and set up all the fancy bells and whistles it comes with.

So far what I like is that I can easily check my heart rate. This is an important feature for me because I think that I’m not getting myself into the heart rate zone that I want to be in when I’m on the treadmill. Now I’ll be able to monitor this. Also, the sleep data from last night suggests that most the night I was in a light sleep and I woke up quite a lot. This is something I really want to monitor. I already tend to get only 7 hours sleep a night, I’m hoping I can figure out a way to use that time more effectively, sleeping more deeply. Monitoring my sleep data will help me on that journey.

I’ll be learning more about how to fully take advantage of all the features this watch has over the next few workouts and evenings. My only disappointment so far is that it isn’t compatible with Apple Music, because Apple doesn’t share music with non-Apple products. But this isn’t a huge deal since I keep my phone with me anyway. Other than that, I’m pretty excited to see what this watch can do, and how I’m going to use it to track my health living journey.

Sleepy thoughts

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I’m frustrated with myself because last night I woke up twice with half developed ideas for Daily-Ink posts, then I woke up this morning not remembering them. A very long time ago I used to keep a pen and paper next to my bed to jot down ideas but I haven’t done that in years. I think it’s time to start again. Sure, I could use my phone, but I don’t want to shine a light in my face or my wife’s, and I don’t want to wake up more than is necessary.

These ideas, like dreams, tend to be very elusive in the morning. I can clearly remember having them, but they drift away. Fleeting thoughts that seemed once solid, but now sit translucent and unrecognizable. I remember waking up. I remember thinking that the idea was good enough to share, and in one of the two instances last night I even remember giving the post a title. And now that’s all I remember, the moment, not the concept… the thinking, not the thought.

I wonder how often this happens in a night? We formulate ideas, resolve issues, and solve problems only to have these insights slip away from our sleepy brains. How many times have we let cognitive brilliance drift away as we drift back to sleep? Or maybe our minds let these ideas go because they are not as insightful as we remember them in the morning. Maybe they escape us because they are not nearly as developed as we think we remember them to be in the morning?

I hope to learn soon just how valuable these ideas might be. I’ll set a pen and small notepad by my bedside and try to remember to jot these ideas down, while hopefully being able to get quickly back to sleep.

Dream loops

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I will often fall into a dream that I can’t escape. It’s often a stressful dream although rarely related to a stress I’m dealing with. Essentially, I get stuck in the dream dealing with a ridiculous scenario, and even after I wake up I can’t help but to go back into the dream.

I end up in a loop where I go right back into the stressful situation in my dream, can’t come to a resolution, wake up again, realize it’s just a dumb dream, then still go back into it again.

It’s 5am and I left my bedroom half an hour ago because I couldn’t break the loop and was waking up again and again in the same stressful situation. Now I can’t even remember the dream; Don’t know what was so stressful, and can’t think of any stresses I’m currently dealing with. But I think I’d still be in the loop if I didn’t physically get out of bed.

I wonder what underlying stresses cause these kinds of dreams? What unresolved concerns do I carry around to make these dream loops reoccur for me? Because I’m feeling like I’m in a pretty low stress environment, enjoying my holidays, and still I end up in one of these loops. What brings these on? And what strategies do people have to be able to jump out of theses loops without having to physically get out of bed?

Morning light

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I love waking up to my room getting lighter. My body just tells me it’s time to get up. As each day has slowly gotten longer we are now at the point where light creeps through the edges of our darkened curtains and signals me that it is time to rise. With a 5am wake up time, it takes until this time of year for that to actually happen.

My perfect routine would be in bed by 11pm, wake up at 5 to 5:30am, then a nice siesta in the afternoon. But I can’t siesta at work, so I force myself to bed before 10pm. Still, a night like last night had me up until almost 11 anyway. Even a couple sleep meditations couldn’t get me to sleep.

Yet it was easy to wake up before my alarm this morning. With daylight sneaking into the room my body told me it was time to get up. And so for the next few months my mornings will be a lot easier, and I’ll awaken ready for the day… all thanks to the morning light.

Getting Rest

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It’s not always easy getting enough sleep. Sometimes, no matter how much I try, I feel like I’m not recharging my battery. I’m in bed early, and I wake up many times during the night. Or I actually get to sleep early and get a good night of rest one evening and then my body won’t let me sleep the next night.

Sleep doesn’t seem to accumulate as easily as lack of sleep. I can get a nice recharge from a few good nights in a row, but one bad night undermines that pattern and puts me in a deficit again.

I’m currently on a challenging cycle and it’s making my regular routine difficult, and exhausting. I’ve got to reset a positive sleep pattern, but if I’m honest… I’m off to a crappy start.

Dream loops

I don’t usually remember my dreams, but I go into cycles sometimes where they stick with me. During these times I wake up repeatedly from the same dream loop. It’s frustrating because the loops are often stressful and I wake up to get out of the situation, then I just go back to sleep and get right back into the same situation I didn’t want to be in.

The one last night had me back in China with my family, but my kids were much younger than when we were actually there. We were at a swimming pool which was also kind of an obstacle course. Imagine a cluttered toy store thrown into a pool.

In the dream, one of my kids was around 2 years old, but a competent swimmer for her age. And in the dream my wife and I kept losing sight of her. We’d go into a bit of a panic, then find her swimming and having fun, then moments later she’d disappear among the toys and we would panic again, and again, and again.

Never once did we find her in danger, never once did she seem scared. Yet every time she disappeared we feared the worst. I woke up at least twice, only to return to the same stupid dream.

Two nights ago the dream was more stressful. I woke up more, stayed up longer, actively tried to change the thoughts I was thinking… and repeatedly went back into the dream. I was in this loop for almost 2 hours from 2:38 to around 4:30am.

I’ve had dream loops like this since I was a kid. They started with falling off of a cliff dreams. I’d wake up with a jolt before hitting the ground several times in a night. They would only end when I saw the body hit the ground face down… then an arm that wasn’t mine would grab the fallen body by the shoulder and turn it over for me to discover that it wasn’t me who fell. That was my queue to let the dream go and move on to a more restful sleep.

I remember in university when I used to deliver pizzas for a summer job. I’d get these reoccurring stress dreams where I had pizzas to deliver (30 minutes or free) and my car would only drive in reverse. I never delivered a pizza late in those dreams, but I’d wake up so stressed about the deliveries, then go right back into the dream moments later.

I don’t know why, for my whole life, almost every dream I remember are these stressful loops? What unconscious messages do they hold? It would be easy to parallel them to stress in my life, but they don’t always come at stressful times. The last time this happened to me I was on holidays.

Two nights in a row isn’t a big deal, but I start to feel the lack of sleep if it goes on too much longer. I need to figure out a strategy that breaks the loop when I wake up. Some method to take my mind somewhere else. Simply thinking different, happy thoughts doesn’t work. Maybe I need to get out of bed, have a glass of water, or do something that is more active than simply trying to think my way out of the loop. I’m open to suggestions.