Days 6-8: Vortex
It is Tuesday night; I have been in bed by 10 and up at 5 for three nights in a row now.
They haven’t been my best “performance” in terms of life. But … maybe not my worst either.
The inspiration for this blog has been my recent relationship struggles with “A,” my close friend / rabbi who is now in a supervisory relationship with me at synagogue, as I claw my way to the finish line of Yom Kippur.
A and I have been avoiding / ghosting each other for about a month now. It came to a head based on some moves I made that felt mean to him. And I basically spent hours hashing it out with him over the last three days, when I woke up at 5 AM like I was supposed to and got a decent night of sleep the night before.
Does that mean this club isn’t doing what it’s supposed to?
But it’s my bedtime, so. More tomorrow.
Adding observations of days 6-8 as of morning of day 9.
So in trying to break my terrible sleep habits, I’ve worked hard to stop “watching TV and playing dumb phone games to get to sleep.” During Rosh Hashanah, I read books to get to sleep, and then when I got my phone back, I used a sleep hypnosis app. I’m very proud of myself for this.
I believe in the principle of “sometimes you have to burn your hand on the stove before you’ll learn not to touch it.” And yesterday morning, I burned my hand on the stove.
Though I haven’t even started the book yet, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to wake up at 5 am and get out of bed and start with a healthy morning routine which right now consists of ~5 minutes of meditation and Dr. Chatterjee’s three question journal.
Yesterday, I made the mistake of checking my emails. I say “mistake” not only because it did wind up burning my hand, so to speak, but also because Dr. Chatterjee (and honestly anyone you ask) says it’s not great to check your phone first thing in the morning. It enslaves us to our devices and makes them extensions of our hands. Like, get out of bed and do something else first.
But checking my phone first thing in the morning, while in bed, is an ingrained habit. I think it has probably been that way since smartphones came into my life, but it felt like a necessity during the years I ran an Asia-based law practice. I would wake up to a business day’s worth of emails every morning. I couldn’t relax until I’d made sure nothing crazy happened overnight. (Which was better than not being able to sleep at all, which is how I started off in this role.)
And as with many unhealthy habits, I used my phone in bed even when I didn’t need to, lagging there scrolling news or watching videos. Both at night and in the morning. I have not “needed” to check my phone first thing in the morning since I quit my big law firm job three years ago. But I still do it.
Yesterday, I woke up to a bunch of group emails from “A.” They were bothersome emails that put me in a difficult position with another person I’m struggling with at work, and in my view, contradicted where A & I had landed yesterday on those topics. And I did the thing that is my Achilles heel … while still in bed, I text-bombed him, trying SO HARD to exercise self-restraint and mostly failing (though, stopping at 4 texts + “Please call” is actually progress for me).
Then when he hadn’t responded in like 40 minutes—I was in bed texting and fuming until nearly six but dragged myself out of bed then and did my little morning routine and he still hadn’t texted back—I responded to one of A’s group emails in a way that I should have realized and maybe did realize would undermine him and make him feel similarly to how I felt when I saw his emails.
We hashed it out over multiple phone calls over the course of the day but it was long and hard and exhausting. And our fight feels a bit like middle school girl drama.
But the good news is, today, day 9… I bounced out of bed at 5 AM and still haven’t checked my phone.