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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Held! Knap dat je dit vol hebt gehouden. Nu vandaag nog. Heel veel succes!!
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
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!
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)
Yesss, thank you! 😀
Stay strong and I hope today wasn’t too bad
Oh mijn god, ik word al moe als ik dit lees. Thank God for Leslie Knope.
Oh mijn god, ik word al moe als ik dit lees. Thank God for Leslie Knope.
Dat moest dus niet twee keer, delete, delete please.