#earlyposting

[sybilius]

Earlyposting clocking in: my cat is fluffye

[sybilius]

UNPLANNED EARLY POSTING?!! UNRESTRAINED WINTER INSOMNIA FUN??

Which, in all honesty it's pretty weird to have waking up at 4:45, wide awake, have some kind of path of action apart from "pace about feeling meh about how meh sleep has been lately"

[sybilius]

Ridiculous breakfast at 5am heheh

[sybilius]

Last EARLY MORNING at least from the last 3 weeks and boy can I tell you the 5am light has diminished in that time

[sybilius]

Tips on how to get up earlier

1. Find some morning things to look forward to. The sunrise is a classic one. Look for small things that you've never seen before. Stay curious. No matter what the reason you've decided to Get Up Early, try to cultivate small joys in and around it.

2. Set out your breakfast or buy yourself one if you can afford it / things are open. I encourage starting with a "treat breakfast" like a pack of grocery store danishes (it will get you out of bed) and in my experience the shine of the "treat" will wear off and you'll eventually just gravitate towards a healthier / cheaper option once you get used to the schedule. The goal here is to make getting up seem attractive when it's at a very unattractive time.

3. Set out your clothes/bags/pack lunch the night before. Especially relevant if you're trying not to disturb a roommate or partner as you go, and even if not, it'll just save you making annoying decisions at a time when the only goal is to lurch out the door with something resembling your wits about you. It also will let you wake up later if you have no morning tasks apart from eat, grab, go. No task is too small. I take like 5 different vitamins at this point so one of mine is to group all of them together so that I just have to gulp some water and grab them. Especially relevant if you take morning medication!

4. If you drink coffee, find the scheduled brew setting on your coffee maker and set it for when you want to get up. No brainer. The coffee is waiting for you AND it gives you a reason to not ignore that alarm (gotta get the coffee fresh!).

5. When you go to bed earlier (sorry, this is mandatory too. I know it sucks but I promise you'll feel better with good sleep and it's worth it), stay in bed lying down lights out no phone with longer than you might with insomnia. Your body will resist the new sleep time at first (especially if there's other activity in the house). If you calmly but firmly Stay In Bed, eventually it will shift with the early risings to accommodate new Sleepy Time. Investing in good sleep aids (blackout curtains, white noise, earplugs) will also help if you have to fight a roommate's schedule.

Source: Me shifting my schedule from a 12 AM - 8AM to a 9PM - 5AM

Disclaimers:

- I am neurotypical

- I did this for reasons of having something I wanted to get up early for, rather than a job which necessitated an early schedule

That's it! Thanks for reading, good luck, enjoy that morning!!

[sybilius]

Major pain in my right heel which is probably some kind of minor plantar fasciitis induced by fucking around too much with various meditation poses. This sucks bro the recommended treatment is rest but I have literally two days left in my commitments so... yeah.

[sybilius]

Sleeping times are weird and interesting. So my early posting happens Tuesday - Thursday, and I've kept it up the past 4 weeks (though for the first two weeks I only got up fuck off early for 1 and 2 days respectively). What's interesting is how quickly my body "wants" to go back to it's preferred schedule (11:30pm - 8am). I always let myself sleep in on Friday and it feels amazing, but what's funny is how quickly that "undoes" my "progress". Even waking up at 6:30am today was not something I really managed -- yes I was awake, but I was bargaining with getting up until 7:30 -- and this has happened pretty consistently on the Saturdays I do this. What usually ends up happening is I try to walk back my sleep by half an hour every day until Monday night. In practice I usually only get to about 5:30 or 6 comfortably.

If I wire up my stress response (or my body does it for me) I can definitely get up basically anytime. But of course that's a sprint that can only last one, maybe two days before it has headache based consequences.

Evidently a MAJOR confounding factor in this data is the fact that I never really sleep when I got to bed early. The struggle is my house is small and my circadian rhythms are very tied to my partners. My husband's schedule goes late and I can't in good conscience ask him to adopt even a little bit of my insane schedule. So from about 9:30pm - 11:30 PM I'm "resting" but I only ever get close to sleep, unless everyone in the house goes to bed (this happened one day at 10:30 PM, since my husband was sick).

I guess all this to say I'm a pretty social sleeper and it's hard for me to buck whatever the house habit is and do my own thing.

[sybilius]

Legs didn't fall asleep during meditation even though I very nearly did constantly. I am going to count it as a W