Self Help Hipster x Hell Week: Day 3 + Hell Night

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Ohmygod I can’t even talk right now.

Day three of Hell Week, including the all nighter I had to pull to get out of my comfort zone.

Hell Week Day One

Hell Week Day Two 

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Fucking five o’clock. I don’t even know anymore at this point what happened, just that I managed to walk downstairs. I think I read? I think I walked to the living room to find my Helweek book? I think I might have sent a very incoherent message to a friend?

Who knows. All I remember is walking around in my underwear thinking that five o’clock SUCKS. And this is coming from a morning person.

Today is going to be rough, for the plain and simple reason that tonight I do not get to sleep. Due to plans I’ve made it was more convenient to do the Hell Night (as I lovingly called it) on the Wednesday night instead of the Thursday. I’ve switched Wednesday and Thursday.

Tonight, instead of getting to go to bed at 22:00 (oh my God that sounds like such a treat right now), I have to stay awake. All night.

But first let’s look at the day.

I make a smoothie with yogurt, spinach, banana and raspberries and sit down to get shit done.

In the morning I do some work, because apparently I can’t let shit go and am attached to my job like a mother to her infant. Also, I promised to be available for emails on Wednesday, so that’s what I’m doing.

I also send out some emails I forgot about for a while, clean out my inbox while I’m at it and reread some old writing that I want to start editing for publication.

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Around 12 I have lunch and I go sit in the sun for a while to relax. I’m flying through the pages of the third Penryn Young book.

I then go to yoga class: Isa is teaching again and I am having a good class. Again, after yoga, I feel a ton more energetic than I did before I went in. I make a mental note of that.

After class and a shower I drop my yoga gear back home, make myself look presentable and meet Lin for burgers at Ter Marsch&Co.

I am back home around ten o’clock and now I gotta stay awake. At this point I have NO idea how I’m going to pull that off.

I know the Helweek book told me to visualise myself working happily into the wee hours of the morning, but even when I do that it seems farfetched to me: I love to sleep, I need a lot of sleep and I have never ever stayed up a whole night in my entire life.

In fact, the only time I came close to it when I went out with friends until 4 in the morning and then had to start work two hours later. That was not fun. At all.

Luckily I have some stuff I have to do. One, I have to make a giant lasagne for a student of mine who just came home from the hospital and who I don’t want to starve over the weekend. Two, I have to vacuum upstairs and clean the bathroom. Three, I have to write. Four, I really need want to finish my book because it is so so good and I love Penryn and Paige and Raffe and the psycho mom and oh God sorry spoilers.

Back to my night.

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I read until 11:30 PM, then I start on the lasagna. Obviously I need to try a bite so I make sure it’s delicious and I’m not poisoning anyone.

I then go upstairs to vacuum my bedroom and bathroom. To pass the time I decide it is a GREAT idea to sit on the floor and sort and organise all my beauty product, effectively cleaning an entire cabinet. Score.

I also put in a load of white laundry. I do a lot of white laundry because I wear white clothes to trick people into thinking I am innocent and also even more tan than I actually am.

I blog, I drink coffee, I clean the mess I made in the kitchen.

Everytime I’m tired I read a chapter of my book, and I save the best part for around three o’clock.

I’m cheating on the no-tv rule by putting on Parks&Rec in the background, but I enjoy having hilarious dialogue to listen to while I’m scrubbing pots and pans.

Time is being weird. One minute, time ticks by so slowly I am convinced I’m in a space-time loop. The next I look up at the clock and almost an hour has passed.

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Around 3:30 AM I can hardly believe I’m keeping my shit together this far into the night. I realise that I just have to keep this up for another ninety minutes and I can take a shower and start my ‘real’ day.

I start to believe I might actually pull this off, fueled by inspiration, caffeine and Leslie Knope.

When it’s four o’clock in the morning, I crash.

I start to get really drowsy now – moreso than before-, my clothing suddenly feels like it’s chafing me (?) and I feel a really weird urge to laugh without knowing why. That’s sleep-deprivation crazies kicking in, right?

I know that if I want to survive the last hour -and by this time I have come too far to give up- I have to think in spurts of five minutes, short doable tasks and easy time blocks.

So first, I go hang up the laundry I just did. 4:10.

Then I continue this blog. 4:37.

Then, because I feel my cognitive functioning deteriorating* by the minute, I write down exactly what I need to do today in a little schedule. I realise that I might not have the capacity to string two word together, let alone navigate myself through a day with a bunch of things to do. When I finish doing that it is 4:48. I hear the birds singing outside. I feel tired, very nauseous all of a sudden (must be all the tea) but happy I did it.

Now it’s time for breakfast, a shower, a yoga class and oh I don’t know approximately 16 hours and 2 minutes before I DO get to sleep again.

Oh God.

What have I done.

To be continued.

*This word took me a long ass time to spell.  

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9 comments

  1. I have weeks like these from time to time because of my sleeping problems, and I honestly do not understand why anyone would want to do this voluntarily.. What I’ve learned though, is that it’s all about the mindset. I can lie awake all fucking night and have a great day if I want to, and I can sleep for 6 hours and feel extremely tired and terrible all day if I have the wrong mindset. So that should help, I guess

    1. I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind: all those poor insomniacs and sleepless moms out there, and here I am doing this shit voluntarily. However, it was a really interesting experience for me and I’m gad I did it. You’re spot on about the mindset though, that definitely helps!

  2. Please imagine me as your mental cheerleader with pom-poms, yelling something like ‘only two more hours to go! you can do it!’ (but rhyming and spelling out your name and stuff)