Mind Pilot – Take Self Control

6:00

Yes, it is 6 a.m., and I’m getting up entirely voluntarily, with no help from my alarm clock — that isn’t set to go off for another hour. 

Even this might sound extremely early, but with my sleep having been getting increasingly out of sync last week, I ended up staying awake through the night on Saturday, and still didn’t manage to sleep much on Sunday morning until the house cleaners had gone at about three. 

I then slept until 9 p.m., got up for some food and to watch Family Guy, and then started winding down to be in bed again by midnight.  I think the crucial reason why I am able to get up so early today is that I have been very careful with my medication.  I’m on risky ground here, but I can no longer afford to take the doses at the levels I have being prescribed — they simply knock me out for too long, and make me waste hours each day to needless extra sleep.  On the other hand, I don’t want to stop entirely, as there is no way I want to risk going anywhere near the territory I was in late last year. 

 It looks like I got the balance just right last night — I had put on a Radiohead album, and was just about to sleep by the end of it.  Although I didn’t sleep as heavily as I usually do, I still slept solidly until six, and these two periods of sleep seemed to balance quite well and make up to the sleep I missed the previous night. 

I’ve been up plenty of times lately at 6 a.m., but mainly due to mix up sleeping hours or insomnia.  To be getting up at 6 a.m. and feel fully ready for the day ahead was a completely different experience, and something I haven’t felt for a very long time.

When I’m getting up in such a bright mood, there can be only one soundtrack to this, so I stick on the Best of James.  This starts with Come Home, which might not sound like the most appropriate track for wanting to get out and about bright and early, but I feel like I’m ‘coming home’ to the kind of mood and routine that I have been working on for so long.  Next comes Sit Down, but of course I am wanting to dance all over the place — except that I can at least enjoy this energy while sitting down on my bike in the not too distant future. 

As the stereo belts out ‘ I swing from high to deep, extremes of sweet and sour ‘ I am thinking there right now I am swinging from deep to high, extremes of sweet and sweeter, but an energetic bike ride should keep this energy under control.  If there is an aviation analogy to how I’m feeling, then I am like a little commuter jet with four Boeing 747 engines attached to my wings.  Perhaps Oasis put it far more succinctly — I really am feeling supersonic – where’s that gin and tonic?

8:30

After revving myself up on bagels and grapefruit, I charged off on my bike, and completed a 21 mile circuit in pretty much dead on an hour and a half. 

As I was heading towards the edge of town, there were two main circuits I could have opted for, the shorter 40 mile one, or the longer one I went for.  The shorter one would be given a better chance of being at the office for bang on nine, but the longer one has some much better downhill descents, so I opted for that one instead.  I still managed to leave the house at dead on nine, and thanks to excellent integration with the local bus service, was in the office at 10 past.

9:10

Well, this is how mornings should start, in fact by far and away the best start to a morning I can ever remember.  So good in fact, that I didn’t bother competing my ‘from the cockpit ‘ notes, and went straight into doing some proper work.
 

5:30pm

So it’s now just gone 5:30, and I feel more than ready to go home, having felt like I’ve done a very solid day’s work.  I would say that my previous ‘business as usual’ will involve finishing at about 10 p.m., without feeling like I was remotely near doing everything I wanted to do.  I can always have more ambitious targets, but my main one at the moment is to write 1000 words of useful content each day.  By the time I have finished this brief update, I should be well over 2000 for the day, and I’m already well into my A-Z update  for my website (well, completing ‘A’ anyway, and the first letter is always the hardest).

Today hasn’t just been about content, there have been various technical updates have had to do on page templates, numerous e-mails and MSN chats I’ve had to get sorted, as well as some financial stuff.  My biggest concern now is to carry on with the excellent start that I have made to the week.  I think tonight’s fish and chip night, but I’ll enjoy a slow stroll through the park on the way home first.  Then it’s definitely off for a well earned pint at the local, and an early night, so that I can arise bright and early and ready to repeat the same again tomorrow.

5:50

About to leave my desk now I’m winding down, but today really has gone so much like a dream that I’m wondering if I can keep this momentum up all week.  So just a quick note to remind myself that with a big concert on Wednesday, a trip to London on Thursday, and then the start of a week in the sun on Sunday, keeping spirits high should be easy, but the challenge would be to stay in focus organisationally.  Having a tidy house should certainly help with that, but hopefully I’ll be able to work on making the office a bit tidier either tomorrow or Wednesday.

Music — James/Wah-Wah — Honest Joe

It’s now clear that I’m not going to get to sleep on the first attempt, and a missed approach procedure is coming on.  Wah-Wah starts as quite a peaceful album, but it’s now coming towards the end, and with the start of the track Honest Joe, I’m feeling a massive rush of energy.

Eventually get to sleep after second album – can’t remember what it was at the time of finally taking this post from note to blog form a few weeks later.

Saturday 6:05 p.m.

I finally got up and had breakfast.  Not quite sure why I needed a full 12 hours sleep, but this one is definitely down to lack of physical, not mental energy.  There might be a fine dividing line between the two, but I am raring to go, and continue on from where I left off yesterday. 

Now that I’m starting to put everything down in type, I’m hoping to have enough reminders to myself so don’t forget the basics which make it easier to get up and stay organised.  So the first of these is to restock the upstairs fridge with small cans of Coke — this might not seem like the obvious breakfast drink, but as I don’t drink tea or coffee, this is my best source of early morning caffeine (note — since writing this, a trip to the local Tesco’s had has been made, and three boxes of said cans have been acquired).

Following on from my earlier post about how I was feeling extremely low this week, things seem to have perked up over the last few hours quite considerably.  Putting my previous thoughts into type was certainly a great start, and then a nice Thai meal with friends and family, bumping into a former work colleague in the process, has put any thoughts of woe out of my mind. 

When things are going well, decision making time around 1 a.m. is a very simple process — be thankful for the day that has passed, and knock off to bed.  The worst things are going, the harder this is to do, especially as a day lounging in self-pity in bed is almost certainly going to be followed by a restless night.  Today has been a mixed bag — although I had breakfast at a reasonable time, it took until 3 p.m. to finally get going and leave the house.  This might be the time on a Friday afternoon that most people are thinking about packing up for the week, but compared to the previous two days, this was actually quite an early start!

Unfortunately, the lethargy continued as I tried to go for a swim, but instead went up to the pool cafe and spent a good hour reading the paper.  Normally, I don’t bother with newspapers, as I can’t see that much benefit in getting bogged down with a daily minutiae of current events. I can get the daily snippets from the news headlines and ticker tapes, and if I want to find out what’s really happening, I can always check an online reference source for the juicy details.  However, when I’m in lethargy mode, I will usually end up spending a good hour scanning through the different news channels, not to mention watching the same dramatisations recycled over and over again on the History Channel or National Geographic.  Today’s paper indulgence might have left me nicely opinionated about the David Davis resignation, but this will only end up with generating another rant elsewhere — hardly top of my priority list right now, but at least it is keeping those grey cells ticking over.  Unfortunately, the lethargy continued when I finally decided to go down to the swimming pool.  Having fallen for a baguette to accompany my paper reading, I needed to give it a bit more time to settle, so I opted to go for the jacuzzi before having a swim, although once I made myself comfortable in there, I again couldn’t be bothered to leave.  By the time I finally did get myself out, I could only be bothered to dip my toe in the water, deciding it was too cold to have a swim.  This might mean reasonable in an outdoor pool, but the leisure centre in question is extremely well heated.  Normally, plucking up the energy to have a swim is hardly an Everest conquering task, but when the lethargy has set in, it seemed like enough of an achievement to get there in the first place, let alone actually do some lengths.

As I was saying, the time around 1 a.m. is usually very straightforward, when I’m back on a normal daily routine.  Tonight is going to be a tricky one.  Trying to go to bed too soon will be like trying to land a plane with full tanks of fuel — just as the plane will be too heavy to stop, I’ll end up being restless, and twitching all night.  Simply sitting down and watching TV is going to feel like passing time for the sake of it — just like I have been doing for the other nights this week.  The only way forward tonight was going to be to go back out again, an attempt to ‘land’ a little bit later. By the time I had dropped my brother back in Warwick, it had already gone midnight, and my local pub had closed its doors, but I did at least manage to sneak a quick pint in one of the pubs round the corner, even if I didn’t feel like staying.  Coming here to the office just seemed like a much better idea — firstly because a 25 minute walk in each direction would finally give me some exercise for the day, and secondly because I was finally feeling like I had enough worthwhile stuff to write down.  This might seem like a bit of a verbose description of one very uneventful day, but hopefully it gives a first ‘picture from the cockpit’, and provide some idea about what I’m hoping to achieve with the Mind Pilot website.

Friday 8 p.m.

Depression has no relation to explicable factors

Right now, I have no real logical reason to be feeling down.  I may have had a serious outage at the end of last year, but that was almost 6 months ago and I should be well out of the shadows of that episode by now.  Business is going extremely well — last week we had a record number of visitors at just over 80, 000, and where due for an exciting new site relaunch in mid-July.  On a personal front, I’m living in a house that is more organised than ever, at last we got to the stage where all the major rooms in the house were completely free of clutter — something that should feel like quite an achievement for someone as disorganised as myself!  Next week, I am part of a group of competition winners who are heading off on affiliate future’s annual Barbados trip, which should be just as good as it was last year.

So why have I been feeling so down this week?  To be honest, I just don’t know, I can’t really explain it.  All I do know is that I want to move on, and develop a reliable way of getting through each week without having to waste so many hours in bed, because I don’t have the energy to get up.  It’s not as if I don’t have work to do — there are plenty of things I could be getting on with related to running my main website (Flightmapping.com).  However much the business is being carried by my brother Mark and colleague Dan, I want to get back in the driving seat, but that date just doesn’t seem any closer.

Right now, I’m stuck in a typical, but completely unnecessary, vicious cycle of making a very late start to the day, finally getting into the office after everyone else has left, and leaving no time to even consider a social life.  This then brings on even more feelings of loneliness, further increasing the cycle of depression.  This much I can explain, but there is still no reason to be completely flat out for two days this week (yesterday and Wednesday).  In fact, on Wednesday morning, everything was going very well — I’d slept extremely comfortably the night before, had gone up, had breakfast and stuck on some energising music, but for some reason reached a stumbling block when I can decide whether to go to for a swim (will the goggles leak again), go for a run (do I have the energy for this) go for a bike ride (why haven’t I got that spoke fixed yet).  Instead, I just crawled back to bed.  It all sounds so pathetic to say how the whole day can collapse on one tiny detail, but this is the reality of what I’m dealing with at the moment.  Motivation can come and go in an instant, and am at least buoyed on by the hope that when I pull out of this, I will feel better than ever, but that time still seems a long way off at the moment.

For now, much as I have a great deal of other ‘ proper ‘ work to be getting on with, I’d rather spend time on my blogs, as I feel that publishing these sorts it gives me a much greater impetus to get and then keep spirits high.

Mood Arsenal

• Lists — isn’t this the first?
• Music
• food
• exercise
• people
• images
• inspirational stories — books, TV, film
• inspirational rumour?
• Photos walls?
• Quotes
• remembering what worked before
• how do I want to feel in one hour?  How do I want to feel this time tomorrow?  At the end of the week?
• How can I help someone today?

So far, the morning has gone extremely well — from the alarm clock at 10 o’clock, I’ve already felt pretty much ready to go, listening to “What’s The Story Morning Glory” by Oasis. 

By the time the track “She’s Electric” comes on, I’m feeling full of energy myself, and I start to breeze through breakfast and cleaning up the general clutter around the kitchen with ease.  Then, all of a sudden, it feels like total engine failure. 

My next aim was to take some exercise before heading towards the office, but I just didn’t feel motivated to do that.  Suddenly, I’m getting worked up about all the clutter in the front room of the house.  When Mum and younger brother came round for a meal on Sunday, it was all looking so tidy, but mum brought a whole load of stuff with her that I’d left behind why stayed with her whilst the house was getting renovated, and now I feel like it’s back to square one. 

 In my notebook, I trying to map out a simple diagram of my options — but next to each one there is a blockage.  Top of the list is dry to the health club and go for a swim (but where will I park the car afterwards), next is go for a bike ride (uncomfortable seat, couldn’t be bothered to the change into cycling gear), or I could just go for a jog (feeling irritated by hayfever, jogging around grassland doesn’t really seem so sensible). 

The fourth option is to stick around and do some more household clearance, but that seems like far too much of an uphill struggle. 

This all seems incredibly pathetic, but hopefully it shows how quickly my outlook can turn from being extremely bright, and ready to go, to feeling sluggish are not able to do the most basic of tasks.  This change can literally happen in an instant, and before I have time to think about what’s happened, I crawl back to bed, and I won’t be getting up until after six that evening.

Monday ninth of June 5:25 pm — office

It’s getting very hot in here, and irritation levels are rising fast.  Everyone else might be leaving, but I’ve just got to, only to find that having moved into this office over a week ago, there is still no Internet. 

Having Internet blocked out can be a useful way of preventing distractions, but right now, there are whole load of things I need the Internet for.  I’m regretting walking here, as I was already hot when I got here, and this office is roasting.  Travelling around the table trying to find out if the Internet will work has just made me feel even more sticky. 

This is why these times when it feels like smoke is starting to appear under the door — it’s time for an “emergency landing” and a quick escape.

Monday 5:45 — courtyard near office

Escaped from the office, and sat down in a courtyard just round the corner.  Already I’m feeling much cooler.  So what’s the real bother about not having Internet, and if there are things which need to be done, can’t I do is go to the library or find some other connection?

Nothing is that urgent, and most things can wait for a day or two, but there is so much organisational stuff that does rely on having an Internet connection.  Websites such as Facebook might seem usually distracting, but they are also very useful for arranging social interaction, and last week was one of those weeks where nothing happened. 

This week run the risk of going the same way as well.  I can waffle a certain amount without the Internet, but I always need connection to look up certain facts and figures. 

Where next?