Season's change: Winter

2021-Mar-27

I've had 3 months of self-care. What's changed?

The good

So far, my self-care has been going well. I generally feel much better. In January I recorded 11 "negative moods", 8 in February, and only 4 so far in March. 3 data-points isn't enough to call a trend, and I'm not yet willing to rule out the improving weather. It's encouraging none-the-less.

My partner and I have had some wonderful times together. We've watched anime, listened to podcasts, made great food, and chilled together while playing video games. Overall, I think our relationship is stronger today than it was at the beginning of the year.

I have established a bit of a routine. I journal and meditate every night. At the end of the week I look over my journals and work out what's gone well, what went wrong, and what I'm going to change. Every 4 weeks I look over my weekly notes and try to take a medium-term view. Finally, I look over my 4-weekly notes every 12 weeks and try to take look over the longer-term.

I've noticed that my "what went well" lists have been growing. In January I could only think of 3 things that went well in a week. I now regularly list double that. I even go back to add more good things as I'm trying to think of what went badly.

Time tracking

Feeling so good has let me start time tracking at work. I found a few areas to improve immediately, and I'm getting about 25% of solid "engineering" time per week. The other 75% go on meetings, ops work, unscheduled calls, etc. It's hard to work around these because they're all necessary, but they're not necessarily important.

I'm not sure if I'm needed on all of these calls, and I'd like to get more time on "engineering" work. Not sure how yet, but we'll see.

Studying

I'm studying for my Canadian amateur radio license exam. This is surprisingly hard work, despite my electronics background. I can pass a mock exam quite easily, but I want to go for basic+hons and Morse code qualifications.

The Coursera "Learning how to learn" course is really useful in this. So far I've improved my mock exam scores from 67/100 to 82/100. I'm aiming for 89/100 in a written exam. I'm also taking the SARC online basic qualification course to try to prepare.

The bad

My routine is far from perfect. I am struggling with getting to sleep before 00:00 every night, and I am missing regular exercise. I manage it in fits and starts, but then it'll slip away for a couple of weeks.

I still have anxiety days. The last two days have been quite markedly different to the rest of my time. I can make it less intense with meditation, so that's nice.

I also nap after work. This can throw my whole evening out of whack as I have less time for what I want to do, dinner's at the wrong time, and I don't feel sleepy later in the evening.

Moving forward

My biggest "misses" are:

Bed times
Exercise
Nap after work
Still some anxious days

For 1, I am going to start my bed time routine slightly earlier; around 2300. I have avoided going to bed at 0200 or 0300, but I'm still not hitting 0000. I want that last little improvement.

For 2, I've set aside 30 mins after work every day. I will use it for exercise or some "study time" on rest days. I hope this little burst of activity will knock-off my post-work naps, and maybe even make sure I'm sleepy at the right times.

I'm hoping that, between the two of these, I'll be able to get the last of my anxiety under control. I don't expect to get to <2 anxious days/4 weeks, but I am hopeful for further improvement

Onward!