2023 Week 34: The Quantified Self

I haven't been writing or drawing much this week - I've been doing a lot of tracking instead. 

First there's the sleep diary. Jon is starting on a 6-week CBT thing for his insomnia and I decided to track my sleep, too. Within days I could see the main thing interfering with my sleep was noise. After putting on earplugs - problem solved. It's quite dramatic. On earplug days I don't even get the mid-afternoon slump.

A good night's sleep, however, doesn't necessarily mean a good mood. I think the other part of the equation is exercise. My exercise is all low-intensity. So we are now trying to do more vigorous exercise in the mornings to see if that helps (his sleep and my mood). 

Number two is this diary I'm using to track how I spend my time and what I eat. So far I like it, and I can see how I spend my time at a glance. Which is a bit scary.

Number three: at the end of the day I do the 3 good things exercise. In the past I didn't like the idea of practising gratitude, finding it phoney and self-delusional, but the Julie Smith book explained that the real point of it is to exercise the attention muscle. I don't know if it works. But it's a good habit, I think, to reflect on what went well - compensates for the tendency to dwell on what sucked. 

After doing 3GT for a couple of weeks I realised that work is one of the things that reliably makes it on the list. The others are Jon (when he's happy I'm happy. Moments that seem pretty mundane - like watching TV and snacking together - always make it on the list), family time, and animals. 

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Here are some animals I've been enjoying this week. 

I also saw an olive-backed sunbird who has a wonderful song, disproportionately loud!

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On Friday I suddenly realised that I am in a good place and can finally rest. Let me try to explain. The past almost 2 years have been one long quest to try and carve out a post-career life. I knew my career as a full-time writer/content generator was over. But what was next? No clue, hence the series of lifestyle/work experiments. 

I must have fallen into the hustle-for-hustle's-sake trap at least a few times. It's become a habit. I spent so much time brainstorming and setting up new ways to make money outside of a full-time job, it hardly feels right to stop. But it's about time I admitted that what I have right now is enough. So I'll sit back, let things run on autopilot, and return to my original plan: to spend my days exercising and reading books.

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This week has been a productive one for reading. I finished Riding the Iron Rooster and Frankenstein. I'm a little sick of these fibrous healthy books so I've started on Malice, off my secret trashy books pile. Wheee.