Regular "Nothing" Time.

Conclusion:

It didn’t last long but it was beautiful while it lasted. Through introducing those forced, empty timeslots, I realize how much I was jumping from one thing to another without deliberate thought. Moreover, a lot of mental disorganization and sheer tension was floating underneath my awareness.

This project ended up being what gave me the perspective to go in another much needed direction for taking care of myself and pushing my projects forward. While I do want to be more consistent with it, I’m fine with how it ended as it was still what I needed.

Feb 14 - Day 7:

Today I was not quite settling to anything and have been finding it hard to follow or engage in structure so at about 4:30 pm, I did a bit of a reset and just did some room tidying up after walking around before setting to the time out.

Went another 20 minutes today but was partly as the first 10 was another just detachment time that I felt like I needed before allow my mind to just go. Unlike last time where I felt like I needed to manage my relaxing, this was more of just giving it the space and small nudges away from busy topics more than anything. I did feel some of that internal discord immediately but not that bad and not long lasting. Mostly my mind just bounced around a bit before just sinking into a very tired state. (which make sense as I know I am quite tired today)

After my alarm went off though and restarted for another 10 minutes, I was just really chill and quickly summarized something that was bothering me lately and what I knew the correct response should be. Then just wandered slowly daydreams to blank state to occasional whimsy thought.

Now writing this up I'm feeling really calm and much clearer. Definitely can not my lack of sleep but overall I feel like this has made me feel grounded, mentally refreshed, and shifted into a healthier mental state/pace. It's a pretty nice result considering when I started I honestly wasn't the most thrilled to do it. (Though not exactly feeling resistance to it either.)

I'm also really enjoying the dynamic feeling of this rather than a super structured and repetitive block of self care I've done in past. It feels nice to the space I need to and actually just naturally do the things without forcing it. We'll have to see if it continues that way but so far, so good.

Feb 13 - Day 6:

I just dropped any sense of structure and didn't do it or go to bed on time. Not good but not going to beat myself up about it just yet.

Feb 12 - Day 5:

I finally had it on my mind enough and just forced myself to sit down when I recognized I wasn’t going to. Ended up taking 20+ minutes as I really needed it.

When I started, I was feeling like I would have usual mental business and then drifting toward boredom and idle fidgeting. My goodness, was I wrong. I did have a bit of mental business but once I pushed that out of my mind, turned off the lights, set an alarm so I wouldn't check the time and just started to clear my head, I was hit by the realization that I was a mess.

Like I guess I assumed I still had a pretty good sense of awareness of my body and mind's state but when I stopped it felt like I opened the door and found my house had been ransacked. I was tense and abstractly anxious across the spectrum. I felt a general feeling of disorder and shock at how I didn't notice these things and then suddenly, there it was with very little effort.

After a bit, I just put a little thought and effort into how things were going lately and relaxed to tidy up a bit. Then I reset my timer and tried to clear my mind again. I felt much better but definitely realized why the feeling that I needed to do this was so strong. I really have been bouncing from one task, activity or engagement to another without any stops or breaks. Particularly, a lack of deliberate structure the past two weeks after I tweaked my back has definitely taken a bad situation for a joy ride.

I'm going to avoid adding more of these per day for now but I'm definitely going to take some time to address the things and sort them out separately. Additionally, I have to admit that today probably wouldn't have happened if things hadn't been as slow as they were today so I need to set some times to make sure this happens each day. I'm thinking, 10 am, 3 pm, or 7 pm at the latest as I use to have similar reflection times around these points. We'll see. I was thinking doing it before bed felt like a cheap success but maybe that's good enough as long as I do it.

I'll also note that putting in earplugs and turning off the lights was a lot better than when I started with the lights on. Though next time I'll turn my computer off instead of on sleep mode where it still has a big blinking light.

Day 1- 4: (Feb 8 - 11)

Welp, I just continued my usual behaviours and just had the need to do isolation time pester me without actually taking the time to do it.