5amclub

On day 9, I was in bed by 10 to wake up at 5 easily.

On day 10 I woke, did my brief meditation and Chatterjee journal, then went for a run (yes, a run!) outside. I came back in, woke up my kids, and then something cool happened. I usually get irritated with my kids when I see them watching TV in the morning, at least when their chores aren’t done / they’re not completely ready for school. Today, instead of getting ticked, I sat down next to Emet, and talked to him about the show and watched it for 15 minutes with him, snuggling a bit. It felt really good to be something other than mean, nagging Mama for once.

Then I wrote two blog posts here including this, which took me until about 11 am, pausing for a couple of law-practic calls. Less than 24 hours later my self indulgence here strikes me as wildly overdramatic to the point of silliness. To be sure, when I’m not feeling the nonsensical emotional agony (the “alarm”) the concept that I am or was ever in that much pain does feel silly. I can almost always channel the energy to write something deep, but reading it is cringe; it doesn’t seem like me.

This has been my struggle in therapy over the years—I’m either quasi-suicidal and seemingly beyond any help that psychotherapy can provide, or I’m fine and therapy is me engaging in a fulfilling but academic conversation with my therapist. I can see this issue in my child too, now that we’ve put him in a therapy / coaching program… he’s always feeling good at the time of the appointment, so in observing him interacting with the coach / therapist my inner monologue is a bit like, hmm, are we overreacting? He seems like a very normal and well adjusted child.

Anyhow, the rest of day 10 felt good. But it occurs to me now, 5:30 AM on day 11, that if I spend an hour a day blogging, I’m sort of negating the “extra time” that the 5AM club touts as the secret to everything.

So today I’m going to make this brief, and maybe I’ll try to decrease frequency so I can better play observer, though I do note that part of the concept does involve taking exstra time for self-reflection so maybe it’s not so bad.

Last night I did not get home from synagogue until about 12:40, was in bed around 1, and maybe asleep by 1:20 or 1:30 … understandably, this morning it was painful to get up but not hard; I did it without much effort but now I am struggling at my computer and may even go back to bed. Next week I will be on California time for a couple days… which threatens to “reboot” my 5 am natural wakeup that I’ve only just established.

And the book itself… I still haven’t gotten past chapter 4, which inspired me to so painstakingly dissect a conversation from 1995. I full on hate the book now. I’ll be interested to see if it ever becomes practical. At present, it shows no signs of doing so.