Week 0: Prelude to 4-10
Sunday
My alarm wakes me at 6. My emotional state is somehwere between annoyance at being woken up too early and excitement to try a new thing. The excitement wins out, and I do my skincare and get dressed. My watch tells me I slept a little less than 6 hours , so I make a mental note to take a nap later I consider starting a load of laundry, but decide to hold off, since Toad, my spouse, is still asleep I pour myself some cold-brew and clear off my desk so I can actually use it. I get to work attaching the sleeve to the rest of my chain mail hauberk (the sleeves are made of can tabs!). I plan to wear it to a concert on Tuesday, and then to every ren fair I attend for the rest of my life. Toad wakes up around 7. I get the sleeve attached. To my dismay, it ends up a little tight in the armpits and one sleeve is longer and the other, I initially plan to lengthen the shorter sleeve, but realize I don't have enough time or beer tabs. I struggle to shorten the longer sleeve until 9 or so. It's still a little long when I try it on again, but I declare it good enough. At 9:30, it's time to head for my silks class. I'm feeling jangly and irritable, overtired. I meditate on the train, which helps my mood, and feel great once I'm up on the silks. After, I decide to skip the nap. I get groceries, make lunch, goof off for a while, then do my meal prep (a big batch of butternut squash mac and cheese and some bean burritos). Toad and I eat some of the burritos for dinner then go to happy hour. After that, it's mostly watching TV and putting laundry away.
Monday
It's still dark out when I wake up. I submit myself to routine. I consider bringing coffee rather than drinking it at home, but I decide I like drinking coffee at home and taking time to reflect on the day ahead of me. I think about how to divide up the long day ahead of me. The plan today is to work a 10 hour day like I will starting next week. I leave the house around 6:45. The weather's really nice, and traffic's a little better than I'm used to. I realize 3/4s of the way through that I've forgotten my sunglasses and headphones, so I might not finish Children of Dune before the library wants it back. I make it to the locker room by 7:30, and am in my office well before 8. I divide my day into quarters, which are managaable 2.5 hour chunks At 10:30, I eat breakfast. At 1 I eat lunch and check the tech news. I plan another break at 3:30, but my lunch goes on a little longer than I'd like, so I don't take that break until closer to 4. I'm pretty sleepy in the last few hours of the workday, since I only got like 5 hours of sleep, but I'm reasonably productive.
Tuesday
I had gone to bed before 11, but my watch tells me I didn't fall asleep before 11:30. Ugh. I feel alright immediately after my ride, but the insufficient sleep starts to drag at me pretty much from the beginning. I have a moderately productive day despite that, but not as much as the day before. I leave the office at 5, for a 9 hour day. I eat dinner at home, then head to Nationals Park to get my face melted off by My Chemical Romance. It rules. The concert ends around 11, but by the time I've been packed in a metro car like a sardine wearing too much eyeliner, taken out my contact lenses and had enough water to not feel dehydrated, it's midnight.
Wednesday
Wednesday is when the wheels start to fall off.
Garmin tells me I've had 5 and change hours of sleep, which is pretty typical for this week. I feel fine as I leave the house, but realize a few blocks into my commute, that I've forgotten my helmet. I backtrack and retrieve it, but my struggles don't end there. My commute relies on the Pennsylvania Ave cycle track, and this morning it's closed for the upcoming F1 race. The goons don't have any good suggestions for how to get around it, and I'm too zonked to be resourceful, so I sidetrack to gallery place and bypass on metro. All that backtracking has a a time cost, and I don't make it to my office until 8:10. Which doesn't really matter, because I have a consultation with an endontist which I'll be using sick time for anyway. I'm a zombie in the hours I am clocked in, though I acheive one minor deliverable. At 2, my uber comes to take me to the endodontist, where I hear more bad news - I need really expensive dental work. Ugh. I'm a mess when I get home. Toad makes me frozen perogies and watches a Dropout show with me. I get involved in trying to figure out the insurance stituation for my dental work (it's bad), so I still don't make it to bed before 11.
Thursday
I get 6 hours and 40 minutes of sleep, which is closer to what I need at least. I feel okay not great. Since I'd left my bike at the office, I put on office clothes and head for the train that'll take me to the bus. It's a "you get there when you get there situation", and I don't get to my office until 8:15. Still leave at 5 to try and beat the rain, though I don't quite succeed at that. I see lots of other cyclists in the same postion as me when I get on the metro. After I get home, I got to a book club at a local bookstore, and get home from that by 8. There's no reason not to go to bed early, though it still takes me until like 10:45.
Friday
I see a light at the end of the tunnel. Watch says I got about as much sleep as the night before. I ride my bike from the train stattion to the office. Much faster than taking the bus, and avoids the madness downtown. I don't pack a lunch, since I'm only staying to noon. Since I have the whole afternoon to myself, I take the scenic route home, fold some laundry, and help Toad cook (though he still does most of the work). We have a lovely shabbat dinner withsome of our friends, and then I go to bed, and sleep long into the morning.
Takeaways
Shifting my wake time was easy, and longer workdays were pretty manageable when I broke them up into quarters. The real problem was getting to sleep at a reasonable hour. I just don't have a good night routine, and I find it hard to pull myself away from whatever I happen to be doing at 10 PM. Next week I try to do the 4/10 for real. Let's see how it goes.