First Foundation: Food and Sleep

So apparently the Universe listens very carefully when you make proclamations like this.  And my body decided to focus on two foundations I don't do well at all:  food and sleep.

I felt off all of Tuesday, which I attributed to getting up early on a few hours of sleep.  I also didn't eat much during the day, and was therefore exhausted when I got home.  I planned to relax for a brief moment before heading off to play rehearsal that night at 6:45, which meant getting out of the house by 6:20.  Which meant sure...it's 5:30.  Sit for a moment.

When I opened my eyes, it was 6:55 and my head felt like it was in a dryer pitching around and around.  I emailed a quick apology on my phone to the director, staggered into the kitchen for some water, staggered back to bed, and passed out again until about 5:30 the next morning.

You would think that food and sleep being two of the basic necessities of life, I might have figured them out by now.  But no.  I tend to not cook, wolf down crappy food, and not really pay much attention to my diet.  I'll go through phases where I'll make some effort, but it doesn't stick.  Mostly due to time crunches and such.

So...having some time now this summer...my body has announced we are starting here.  Diet and sleep patterns.  So, here's the basis for the foundations of what I need to do:

• Sleep patterns for waking up early and going to bed at reasonable times

Summertime!!!!!  Sleep in!!!!!  Stay up all night!!!!!!

No.  If I'm going to make a habit out of this, I need to start it when I don't have to.  Which means keeping up getting up "early" starting out, or at least maintaining as time goes on. 

• Regular meal planning

This is where I fall down.  I don't make plans of what I'm going to eat, but come home and stare at the fridge with a "what do I want"?  And since I'm usually exhaused by not eating breakfast (and sometimes not eating lunch), I grab whatever crap happens to be in the fridge or go get slices of greasy pizza at Salvatore's here at school.  Utilizing Sunday as a shopping day and a planning day, I can prep and prepare a plan for the week, even pre-cooking and freezing stuff.  Especially with play rehearsals coming up, this will be an important thing.

• Breakfast.  And lunch.  And dinner involving green bits.

Yes, all three.  And Breakfast does not consist of only coffee.  I actually gave up coffee recently for about a month (stomach issues), but I'm back on a regular routine of a half-pot at home/car ride into work.  I'm guessing this has a lot to do with my energy levels being as low as they are.  I'm supposed to do a meal-planning course with my health insurance, so this would be a good one-two combination of stuff I should get done.

So there's a start.  I did fairly well yesterday: breakfast, lunch (oriental salad with chicken!), and dinner of an egg sandwich.  Today...not so much.  No breakfast, no lunch packed, and dinner is going to be a scramble again due to lack of planning.  So Sunday is going to be the first major meal planning exercise, and for the rest of the week I'm just going to try to see what the blocks are from making this a regular thing.

Alright.  Home to get dinner and run to rehearsal.  Maybe an egg sandwich...?

Building foundations

There are a great many proverbs about the necessity of a solid foundation to do any sort of work of consequence, and there is a lot of truth to that.  Without foundations, everything collapses.  And truth be told, I've been having a multitude of foundation issues.

The basics of human foundations is systems.  Systems and routines for the morning, getting going, doing quality work you want to get done, maintaining order, not getting bogged down in other people's minutae...and frankly put, at this point, I've got nothing.  My morning routine is shot, my meal routine is non-existant, my finances are a disaster, my social life is a farce, my creative work is non-existant, and my work schedule is unfulfilling and bogged down in everyone else's last-minute demands.

However, as a teacher, I am lucky in having a summer vacation.  I did not get summer school this year (application didn't get submitted correctly), which has turned out to be a blessing.  So, I'm going to do some foundation work.

In part of the case, that work is going to be literal foundation work.  The back wall of the apartment house is peeling off, and the rest of the foundation needs patching.  The mortar is crumbling away, and that's the reason the house has already shifted once about seven years ago.  And doing some inspection of things downstairs, the partial patching that was done in the back years ago seems to be holding. 

So my "summer job" (notably because amongst the financial wreckage is owing my landlord money) is going to be fixing and re-setting the back wall, along with patching the foundation.  I'd had a few "cosmetic" fixes in mind (new flooring in kitchen and hallway, where some of the sub-flooring seems to be loose, and also the main foyer hallway), but the foundation work is clearly the most critical.  Without the foundation in place, the entire house goes backwards into the creek.

In a similar fashion, much of my existance is headed creekward if I don't apply some fixes.  I'm 41, which is time enough to fix things, but nearing a critical point.  So I'll be identifying areas I'm working on, including:

• Creative
• Summer prep for school
• Financial
• Basic life areas (morning routines, cleaning, maintaining, etc)
• Relationships (ex and others)

As part of this shift, I'll be keeping track and blogging, since a great deal of personal change is accountability.  So the blog will be a little more active than it has been of late.

Alright - off to get ready for school, prepare for closing up the library for the summer (sort of - explanation of that later), and rehearsal this evening.  Long day ahead.