September 12, 2012
A flashdrive for size perspective. This is what I will be having more of but point of order, Trader Joe’s: this is not a lemon BAR. This is a lemon CUBE.
Things have been brewing.
My feet were set on a path toward climbing career mountains, while time and experience began carving out a niche in our lives, for our lives. And in nearly direct dichotomy to my quest to conquer the career dragons, my health demanded its rightful share of my attention and I made the decisions, over and over, bit by bit, that it had to be tended to.
And there’s a saying I’ve been living by a lot lately: plan for the worst, hope for the best. After all, theories are all well and good but life will happen.
And it surely did.
The Big Work Satisfaction Plan (ease my work burdens so that I could finally take care of my health while carrying on a successful work life) was knocked off the table due to a variety of complications, some sudden, some progressive.
My immediate reaction was to double down, and make the best of an initially bad situation while assessing the landscape. Of course, I also put the word out to my Career Board of Directors for their thoughts and guidance. While I could certainly change my mind and adjust my actions accordingly later, my first instincts matched their recommendations to a T.
After a waiting period, my assessment was: Failure to improve, no true signs of improvement to come in the foreseeable future, and a quickly developing toxic environment. While not blindly optimistic about the future, I still believed in the organization’s overarching goals and hoped for the best. My next move was to map out potential options that stretched out into next year.
While I created this action plan, the developments continued in a downward spiral on a number of critical fronts. I did my best only to allow minimal venting once in a while publicly and about less important things, but though I didn’t realize it, even that wasn’t very minimal.
Tough cookie though I am, it took a toll. Curled up on the sofa after work at least 20 minutes a day – utterly drained, listless, short of breath, misery incorporated. Weekends were worse, my body just needed every minute to try to recover.
My doctor, the one I’ve seen exactly once since last year, discussed my stress-induced, exponentially increased pain for about 12 minutes before asking me to quit.
My friends, at least the ones who are willing to be totally blunt, told me she was right: take her advice and leave.
Those weren’t just signs, they were people willing to be upfront with me and give me a push. That, I truly appreciate.
At first, I was worried about how I could walk away without financial preparations and from what I saw as my responsibility, my reputation, and without appearing weak. I had to work through those mental barriers, even before doing the math, which is a first for me.
In identifying those precise barriers, I was able to address them.
Responsibility: Who are we kidding? I own this word by now in my personal life. It’s no surprise, then, that my professional accomplishments have certainly far exceeded what I’ve been paid to do by any objective measure, with data to back this up;
Reputation: See above – my value has been firmly established with reliable people internally and externally. If someone chooses to denigrate me or my choice to leave, that’s their problem and not mine;
Appearing weak: My leaving is a valid choice, for any reason. As long as I did so in a graceful and professional manner, nothing else matters, not even the money. No accusations of cracking under pressure or “losing” can actually make it true – I made a smart choice for me, my family, my health and anyone who chooses to sneer or smear is doing so from a dark place. I have nothing to prove, I’ve already had an untouchable stint there. (And if my ego wanted a bit of something? As sometimes it does. It may take four people to replace me, if not more.)
And wouldn’t you know, as I was coming to terms with that, I was surprised with an offer.
I’d been gearing up to create my own path, such was my determination to leave on my terms, but this was an unexpected opportunity to:
A) leave on a much shorter timeline,
B) increase my income,
C) significantly improve my commute.
I hadn’t felt as light as I had just during the negotiations in years. I don’t celebrate until any deed is done and done but even solely the act of building an immediate road out instead of waiting out to the longer term as originally planned so that I could save more – the difference that made to my mood, to my breathing, to my physical health -well, it was just amazing.
Knowing this is the break I needed, in more than one sense of the word, and will be a positive change for at least a year or two, I accepted.
With that timeline in mind, I will continue to work on my own side projects but with a more focused eye on directing that energy to making those projects something more worthwhile and perhaps income-producing than just hobbies.
*****
Donna Freedman’s recent GRS post on personal responsibility touched on the idea of taking stock of your surroundings, the results of your choices, and realizing that you have to take responsibility for the role you played in getting to where you ended up when you find that you’re in a seemingly untenable situation.
This is all very true – so much of our lives, we become inured to the power, and responsibility, we have to actively make choices.
How often do people choose to stay and complain at jobs where they are increasingly unhappy just because something about it is “good” except for the job itself?
Staying at a job where I could build a “stable” career under increasingly stressful conditions reminded me of being a lab rat: how long will one stay when the heat is only increased in tiny increments but the conditions are inexorably intolerable?
How often do people stay on when they’re unhappy because they have too much debt or financial obligations? Or because they have perceived obligations, burned too many bridges, or failed to build bridges in the first place? Or because they’re too busy for a job search?
I didn’t just get lucky – I put in about a decade of hard work to build a stable financial foundation so I could walk away from anything. And while things would have had to be pretty dire before I did that, I was also building social capital with my professional reputation.
Most critically: we have to make and take those opportunities.
We also forget that the smallest decisions can hold the greatest influence. Being flexible, understanding how you work best and learning how to make the best of any situation but refusing to tolerate abusive conditions – these aren’t monumental decisions. But those are all decisions I made long ago and when I remembered them in the context of the greater whole, not just as part of my work ethic but as part of my life philosophy, they paved the way to a big decision that feels right for me, and right for our family.
And reading J “Poppa” Money’s updates? I can foresee a bigger challenge ahead already. If we do have a family, how shall we manage this without me having to be the pregnant one? Hmmm…… 😉
(Mostly kidding but ….. We shall see.)
September 10, 2012
Of late, there have been a few poignant posts and conversations that touch on a very important issue: safety with an underlying theme – sometimes not at all hidden – of misogyny. Safety’s important for everyone, a message I communicate to all, but the degree to which men don’t experience the same issues of objectification and targeting as women do is obvious by the reactions and ::horrorface:: that we get from our husbands and those men friends who haven’t ever run a protection detail for us on a night out when we Facts-Only describe the experience of a simple solo walk or a run.
*****
This woman’s experience on public transit when she just wants to be left alone to read her book may sound like an exaggeration to anyone who has had hundreds of safe and easy rides, day or night, sober or drunk, but I have had thousands of those and I still have my guard up every minute against this occurrence because it happens.
The vast majority of my rides are peaceful, most people talking to me just want directions, need a bit of information or are a bit curious and then drift back to their own world after a 30 second exchange. I’m approached or interrupted by people – usually tourists or new commuters – all the time on my commute and once I’m past my initial startlement it’s not a big deal.
Still, there are a few jerks who think they’re welcome to bother me rudely, persistently and without regard for boundaries. They aren’t too frequently imbalanced so I’ve been able to put them off politely or immediately change cars and seats at a station stop if the polite wave-off doesn’t work.
Sometimes it doesn’t work. Then it gets uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. There’s often cursing, raised volume, nastiness.
It can even devolve into something extreme like what she describes – the person froths and foams, screams, raves, rants, flails and threatens. (Sometimes they board transit like that, actually.) And you need someone to reach in and physically haul you, the target, out because you need someone watching your back. You don’t know if your movements will trigger an actual physical attack. I’ll point out, too, that the would -be attacker is not always male, sometimes the person demanding something from you is female. I’ve seen that too.
You don’t need to be pretty, I certainly deliberately dumb down my average-enough appearance for transit travel, you just have to be unlucky enough to have attracted some persistent fool’s attention.
*****
The incessant stream of Twitter threats against a variety of comics professionals, many of whom, like the public who came into contact with the repulsive slug probably blocked him, recently came to the attention of Mark Millar who took a vocal stand and insisted that we all do something about this, but the fact remains, people can do this with impunity.
And the reaction of a number of people? Blame the targeted persons. “Big girls know Twitter has a block function.” (comments thread) Really. That stops the bullying and the threats and the invitations to bodily harm?
Clearly not, as Sue and Kelly of DC Women Kicking Ass have been trolled, harassed and cyberbullied to an outrageous degree for years by that very troll. Yes, blocking makes no difference, folks.
You can’t stop a bully by ignoring them. And I’m hugely thankful that people like Ron Marz recognize that:
….
Ignoring a miscreant does nothing to prevent the same disgusting behavior from being inflicted upon someone else. It probably encourages it, frankly. You’re just passing the buck. I’d rather spend time dealing with it, and finding a way to get the abusive behavior stopped, than turning a blind eye. The goal should be to prevent the asshole in question from moving on to the next victim.
Comics is a medium that tells a great many stories about heroes, about people who do what they can to protect others. About doing the right thing, especially when it’s hard. I like that. I believe in doing what’s right, and helping others when they need it. I believe people who cross the line of acceptable behavior so outrageously should be punished. That’s why I did what I did. That’s why Mark did what he did.
While there’s been plenty of support for what happened (which is much appreciated), I’ve also seen a fair amount of dismissive reaction: everything from claiming this poor troll is having his free-speech rights violated, to the lazy shrug of “Well, it’s the internet…” Maybe I’m pissing into the wind here just as much as I am when get on my soapbox about digital piracy. But in just the same way, I believe it’s a discussion is worth having, a fight worth fighting.
…
Social media offers access for people like him to abuse innocents. But it also offers ways for us to come together and do what’s right. If you see something that shouldn’t be happening, don’t just ignore it. Do something about it. If you’re suffering abuse from someone, ask others to help you. We can all be somebody’s hero.
*****
via NicoleandMaggie, to them via a comment thread on a Scalzi post: Letter Writers who don’t know how to deal with the Creepy Guy in their friend groups.
A quick sum-up: Letter Writers have dude friends in their groups who are tolerated despite their creepy-ass and inappropriate and unacceptable behaviors as Situation #1:
“concentrating on the other women: telling them to expose themselves, telling them their skirts weren’t flying high enough while they were dancing, hitting on them when he knows they have boyfriends….. Whenever there are parties, it seems like he goes with the mindset that he will meet someone there that he might be able to have sex with, rather than to have fun with his friends. A couple months ago at one of these parties, some of us went to the park after dark to hang out; Creeper approached one of my friends, asked where her boyfriend was, and when he was told that the BF was out of town he put his hands on her shoulders and told her that BF had “forfeited” her for the evening.”
Or outright sexual assault in Situation #2. Evidently in Situation #2, Letter Writer was dismissed by her BF who didn’t want to confront the assaulter because they were longtime friends.
Captain Awkward’s extensive responses to both were pretty spot-on. I’m only writing here as an adjunct because, of course, I was outraged that the situations were ongoing and the men involved were that blatantly laissez-faire about their own friends, male and female both, involved.
I can’t conceive of the notion of living with, or staying friends with, people who were so utterly dismissive of basic human decency.
I have been in situations like that, and like this, and my friends have been verbally assaulted time and again, and I react very very negatively.
PiC had a creeper friend, you see, and before we ever started dating, I met all of his friends. Including that creeper friend. He thought it was totally appropriate to spend the conversation standing way too close to me, staring exclusively at my – let’s face it, folks, remarkably unendowed chest – so I concluded the conversation quickly and walked away, disgusted.
I related the story to PiC later, half smiling, and told him that should that creeper ever pull that stunt again with any move to touch me? I’d feed him his own eyeballs. I made it quite clear to him and a close mutual friend that their fuzzy friend of yore, going back double digit years of history, now with all the drunken-excuse embellished, prostitute-centric and other “amusing” gamy stories whenever he came back up on their radar was a creepshow and he was unwelcome.
They could do whatever they wanted together on boys’ nights, but he was certainly never welcome to join us, ever. There was never a moment’s hesitation or disagreement with my statement, and I noticed that his presence at mutual parties and gatherings was incredibly rare thereafter. I also noticed that he wasn’t voluntarily added to the guest list of boys’ gatherings either.
I don’t take responsibility for the changes in that set of relationships across the board – there were many mutual friends who chose to step back from their own personal friendship. But I do note that there were at least two important narratives that had to exist: I had to be willing to speak up very clearly with my observations and expectations, and PiC had to respect me and those expectations more than he cared about that friendship. And in addition, at least a few of his key friends happened to agree with my observations and acted accordingly to disengage from the creeper on a regular basis.
There was no doubt in my mind that it was possible the guy’s creepiness could be curbed but not if he was “encouraged” or rather, enabled, as guys can and will do in their casual friend group environment simply by not saying anything about the Creeper’s actions or behaviors. I’ve seen that happen because there’s no comfortable way to police a friend in a friends-only environment. And yet, I’ve watched others do it casually with a “Dude, that’s creepy, don’t do that.” Those are powerful words: Don’t do that. It’s not right.
But many don’t do that because they don’t feel like it’s their place to criticize a friend, they don’t feel like the behavior is really out of line when they’re among friends, a multitude of reasons. Still, it has to start somewhere lest a minor creeper grow out of hand to become a Full Scale Creeper and worse.
People like him are those who think it’s ok to catcall and harass women trying to walk down a street – he definitely didn’t think that was an issue.
And I certainly can’t tell the difference between someone who’s just catcalling because it’s amusing to one who has intent to assault, harm and/or rape. From my perspective, the 3 guys in that car who decided to stalk me for more than a block and cut across several lanes of traffic to pull up next to me at the corner several weeks ago certainly made themselves a credible threat so calling the police and pulling anything to defend myself was an appropriate response. From theirs? Who knows? It could just be a game that they always win, big or small.
And that’s not counting the 11 other instances of catcalling in the previous mile of walking up til they arrived.
I’m not of the mindset that we have to spoonfeed a new narrative for men to understand how to react in shitty situations – I know plenty of men who are perfectly decent human beings and know pretty much the right things to do in principle. They are the ones I am friends with. This is why I am married, PiC’s not a rotting jerk in any degree and neither are his friends.
I do think, however, that there is plenty of evidence there are idiots out there who do need to be identified and not enabled. The reinforcing that the creepy and unacceptable behaviors are in fact, creepy and unacceptable, has to happen before it’s too late and harm is done.
At the very least, the fact that we all should be able to recognize and say that creepy and aggressive behaviors are wrong, toward men and women, without coming under ridiculous fire, should be a given. And it’s incredibly disturbing that we often don’t even have that basis of humanity to rely on.
September 8, 2012
For a whole $25, PiC and I splurged on a new dinner experience nearby – trying a restaurant that no one we knew had tried before. We’re not hugely adventurous in that way. We love trying new foods and new places, but PiC relies on recommendations and reviewed places, the risk of a disappointing meal is just too high for us in our old age. 😉 I thought it might be worth it just to see whether we had a worthwhile contender for our business and I didn’t personally regret the price even though I might not feel like it was worth going back any time soon.
PiC did a real comparison, ordering the bibimbap, not the stone pot. It was basically all the classic ingredients, and good. A little odd that the rice was on the side but that didn’t take away from the meal.
The Classic Bibimbap: served here with the rice on the side instead of in the bowl.
Instead of my usual soft tofu soup, I was charmed by the idea of a restaurant serving oxtail soup, so I had to give it a try. I’d recently experimented with cooking a family recipe and that went pretty well, but I still need to develop that sure hand for the flavoring “to taste.” I probably should have gone with the tofu soup. The oxtail soup broth was bland and disappointing, as though it hadn’t been steeping to bring out the flavor of the oxtail bones. It did have all kinds of things in it but it didn’t make up for the fact that the soup was pretty much hot water that I flavored with the salt and pepper.
Oxtail Soup: Just add salt and pepper
Some days I choose Korean cuisine entirely for this:
The Side Dishes: Possibly my favorite. There’s a seaweed salad, potato salad, kimchee (an acquired taste that I haven’t quite got down yet), soybeans, coleslaw, and a lot of other delicious tidbits.
The problem with that is when they disappoint, like this place did. The seaweed salad and other normally tart pickled selections, were simply not. They were limply tangy, like they were trying as hard as possible not to be offensive which made no sense to me because the population around here seems to appreciate fairly authentic (which would read: flavorful) cuisine. After all, the very popular usual restaurant serves very pickled side dishes and they do an incredibly brisk business – I’m going to say there’s a correlation between their flavors and their success. I want my tart things to be mouthpuckering! Otherwise I’d just stay home and make my own darn pickled stuff.
Overall: they’re very average. Taste isn’t better than our usual nor are the prices better. I suppose it’s good to know we’re weren’t missing out on a gem either in the flavor or price arena?
No, I would really have liked to have a second option on those nights when our favorite is jampacked. But they’re super nice there and bring you tea and stuff while you wait. They do everything right. Which is why they’re the favorite.
September 5, 2012
If I never again have to share a communal restroom with
people who think taking phone calls, or even conference calls, while using the toilet is ok;
people who have trouble hygienically using toilets and then clearing up the evidence afterwards;
people who think that the bathroom – in or out of the toilet stalls – are the best places to hold gossip sessions;
I would consider myself a lucky lucky person.
If I never have to listen to pompous asshattery being repeated outside my physical vicinity but yet loudly enough to be heard, in Groundhog Day-esque fashion, on every matter under the sun including politics, religion, sex lives, how one really should fix that particular problem no really this is the undisputed way, oh I’m so very meta I was just being meta at you and you didn’t even know it, and personal discussions with family, friends and significant others, I might think I’d died and gone to my reward.
A graphic shared with me on the pain of the responsible, stuck working with the uncommunicative and the unproductive:
If I never ever had to go to another Team Meeting again ……
— A variety of people on why they changed careers or what kills them about their jobs.
These are the verses to the tune of People are Hell, I think.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by the commonality, and frequency of, the restroom related complaints since I have expressed at least one or two of them myself. I was tempted to add one or two myself but refrained lest any of my esteemed colleagues ever recognize themselves here. Heaven forfend.
They made me laugh a bit, not quite schadenfreude since the complaints aren’t unfamiliar in the slightest, but I suppose it’s the reason The Office is funny, right? Bit of horror, bit of comedy, bit of drama.
I read a recent study, which I can’t find now to link to, on open plan offices and how they’re not quite the ideal workplace layout once envisioned. People work with headphones to shut out their neighbors more often than not and they’re actually more stressful for people in general because you can’t control the ambient noise if people are randomly striking up conversations. The lack of privacy means that generally people will hesitate to discuss more delicate issues around their work areas and will have to find a private space to do so.
So many businesses, including most of my recent employers, have invested in just this sort of open plan arrangement while reserving the private spaces only for those at the very top and I don’t see them backing away from it as the human/intellectual-potential cost isn’t enough for them to make any real physical or policy adjustments.
For my part, I’ve always worked in busy, bustling environments and became very accustomed to ignoring people, so completely zoning out and creating my mental bubble without help is no hardship, at least until the conversational frequencies hit Shrill or Panic. If it does either one of those things, chances are good I should be tuning back in anyway.
Oddly enough, if I’m working at home, hobbying or real working, I don’t actually like the television or radio to be on – that is more likely to be distracting than real live people. For all that I mock the dog for leaving the room when videos are playing, I guess we’re more alike than not.
Do you like working where you work or do you wish for a totally different environment?
August 20, 2012
In one of those scenarios bound to make me even more neurotic about benefits come Open Enrollment, we recently discovered by word of mouth that PiC’s company covers an initial sum of transit benefits before employees have to pay out of pocket for their transit costs.
I’ve been paying over $100/month, pretax into my own company’s program this entire time – we could have halved or cleared that cost to the household entirely.
Once we heard that, he applied for the new card and I cancelled my contributions shortly afterward. An equivalent amount, rounded up, has now been routed directly to savings to salve my bruised financial blogging pride.
For the record – I found the Open Enrollment booklet for last year’s term tonight and pored through it twice. There was absolutely zero mention of this additional tidbit in the benefit.
Perhaps the employee had to log into his or her account to find it? I really wish he’d asked his colleague how he or she knew about it so I could do some more investigation and see if there’s anything else we’re missing. Nosy as I am, I would have asked.
August 15, 2012
There’s a spot our friend shared with us “in” Half Moon Bay, though we’ve been assured by other friends that it’s not actually IN Half Moon Bay really, called Barbara’s Fish Trap, which serves some pretty fantastic fish and chips.
The view from ashore: Chilly.
Sign: Slightly misleading. (I’d just like to point out, Super Captain Sarcasmo-style, that we are just as astonished as the sign that pets are allowed but we are happy to bring one.)
- More than enough fried and fried: Fish and chips, calamari.
Not greasy, lightly battered, and a hefty serving size. Not pictured: non-dairy clam chowder. Not recalling why the non-dairy was important, just that the chowder was delicious.
Mussels with So Much Garlic, and Butter Sauce. Everything that is right.
It was on some trip or another that I discovered that mussels served as an appetizer or as an entree like so, is FANTASTIC. I may have had to grow up to figure this out but homigosh am I glad this has happened. BLISS.
********
An AMAZING DIY Oyster on the Half Shell. Amazingly hard to crack open.
In one of my rarer moments of adventure, I requested an excursion. An oystering excursion. PiC obliged, despite his usual personal oyster consumption limit of about 4. Of course I bought fifty. Minor miracle we survived that day.
*Note: I bought fifty because it worked out to $1/each that way. Of course.
And Doggle came away smelling of oysters for a week. Long story.
August 13, 2012
Night after night, my brain chased multitudes of thought clouds up and down the night sky. For years, 17? More? I spent hours not falling asleep at night until nearly dawn.
Savvy Working Gal, as a fellow insomniac, requested I share how I conquered insomnia.
It wasn’t until last year that I finally got effective help, but it’s more fair to say that I have insomnia management or coping mechanisms and I will have to keep in practice, just as I would treat my other chronic health issues, because when I don’t, I stay up til dawn again.
As you can see in the graphic above, the whirligig of my brain may seem very specific, but I think the overall trend is rather common:
Wakefulness. I have strong insomniac tendencies.
Personally, I mentally fuss over things that are important in my life and it’s hard for me to let them go. And because I’m awake, I start doing things that compound that wakefulness.
My personal oddities: The wakefulness that accompanies that worry theoretically shouldn’t overwhelm the tiredness that I have rightfully earned at the end of the day, not when I typically work upwards of 12 hours a day and get very little sleep the night prior. And the pain that I live with should and does fatigue me so I should sleep like the dead. I do also live with physical/medical issues that complicate my insomnia (the insomnia came first) so certainly these techniques can and have been modified to suit someone with chronic medical issues. I won’t dwell on those modifications in this post as I don’t expect they’re terribly relevant.
How to make sleep a regular part of your life again
A training period.
During a rather trying period of a few to several weeks, we were asked to:
1. set an exact bedtime,
2. eliminate all in bed activities extraneous to sleep except (ahem) involving your partner, (no reading, no eating, no watching tv, no laptops, no kids, no music, no animals playing, nothing at all but getting in bed to sleep)
3. only go to bed when you mean to sleep.
4. I am pretty sure people were asked to cut out caffeine after ~4pm as well but as I rarely drink any, I’ve forgotten that part!
Now, if you were sleepless: tossing, turning, thinking (see graphic above), you were instructed to leave your bed and sit quietly elsewhere to reset. Return when you’re ready to try sleeping again. But no television was allowed. No media with bright lights that would just stimulate your brain.
The key here was to retrain your body and your mind to understand that the bed was a sleeping haven. Both. A haven and for sleep. You may have spotted what else this means: you don’t get to flop on the bed at other times to hang out!
Stress: Making time and space.
All that time you’d normally be worrying over legitimate things laying awake in bed? Your brain still craves that and you have to give it that release.
You now set aside a set period of time in the day. During your commute. On the toilet. Take a chunk of time somewhere in your day, 10-30 minutes, whatever you’re comfortable with, and make that your time to actively mull over the things you need to think about. Actively worry, in fact. Get it done in the light of day and it gives your brain an outlet and a set schedule in which to say, Not now, brain, it’s late. Tomorrow, at 4 pm, we’ll worry about that.
And exercise.
Whether it’s stretching, meditative yoga, walking, running, classes at the local athletic club or gym, whatever suits your abilities, the act of engaging in a new physical activity isn’t just healthy, it improves your ability to sleep well.
I’ve added a walk to my weekly routine starting with 2 and now up to 5 times a week, approximately a mile long. Though I can’t always power walk it, I do my best to make it as brisk as possible, no matter how Eeyore my day has left me. It’s just been a matter of changing my commute routine to the once -less preferred routine. Now I don’t “miss” the bus at all, I just skip it entirely! Even if I’m not invigorated, my circulation is improved and my ability to sleep is definitely improved.
Those were the things we were asked to do during the transition/training period.
It wasn’t easy juggling everything in at once, and I found it a little easier to do the Bedtime Brain-Time Space Clearing thing first in combination with Stress Later, and then add exercise in the next few weeks.
It still wasn’t great at that point. And we moved on to the next things….
Learning how to Breathe Properly
Apparently, deep belly breathing is hugely relaxing and oh-so-difficult. At least, it was for me and a lot of others in the room with me. I don’t know if I should attempt to describe it for fear of leading you all astray!
But in essence, it’s the kind of breathing you see babies do, where their bellies are moving up and down, not their chests. To do the same, you push your stomach out when you take air into your lungs to pull it deep down into your belly instead of letting it pit-stop in your chest. At least, that’s how I visualize and feel like I’m doing it. And after about 20 really focused deep belly breaths, my body does a hybrid full body breath naturally instead of totally wimping out and chest breathing again.
Sometimes, when I get incredibly tense at night, PiC reminds me to deep belly breathe and by the time I get it down, I’m so tired I can nearly relax.
Meditation/Relaxation CDs
If you don’t mind listening to things at night, letting a meditation CD run you through the paces can really make you sleepy. I wouldn’t say they’re boring, but even if they were, who cares, if it does the job, right? 😉
It was one of the first things that actually put me down like a baby. By which I mean, lulled me to nearly sleep and then I woke up with a start, freaked out about who I was and where I was. But that latter part is relatively normal for me. Nevertheless – lulled me to nearly sleep at 10 pm. This is the important part.
We did these CD routines once a week together just to learn how to relax without thinking for 8 weeks. And were instructed to listen to them at least once a week if not every night during the training period as sleep aids (the only time you were allowed to sleep to them as you were not meant to sleep if trying to meditate/relax).
Other Recommendations
Taking warm baths (temperature is your call) an hour or so before bed: this gets your body prepped for sleep.
Actually learning and practicing Meditation. Not a religious/spiritual thing unless you want to pursue that, just as a relaxation technique. It teaches you the ability to make your mind and body to Let Go, the precursor to sleep.
Things that were really important in coping for me
Support: You wouldn’t think I’d need support in this but the battle of sleep vs not-sleeping means that we need better communication, coordination and understanding of each other’s needs and priorities. PiC and I don’t have the same schedules, needs or habits, especially when mine are artificially imposed habits, but because sleep is critical in coping with my medical issues, having a partner who is on board with my sleep needs is just as critical.
I need to get a minimum amount of sleep and it has to be good sleep.
A new mattress: We had a nearly 20-year old mattress and I could make out the impression of every coil on my back. Combined with my other needs, it was time.
This was a multi-month process to get the sleep consistent from night to night, and a fair amount of time and money spent, and I still relapse on occasion. But not too frequently.
There have been many more sleep-filled nights than not since I started, and that’s quite a thing. I hope that some of this is helpful!
:: Do please share your stories and what you’ve tried or are trying if you’ve been a fellow citizen of the night.
