Saturday Six
With a little twist
A little reflection
I have a smartwatch that tells me my heart rate constantly and also has this fun little thing called a Body Battery. Based on my sleep stats, it calculates how much battery I start out the day with (today I started out with 57%) and it slowly goes down throughout the day. High stress times drain the battery and show up as bright red blocks of time. During the weekdays I usually drain my body battery down to 5%, usually sleep lightly with little REM which results in a low body battery start to the day (I’m happy if I get to 60%! Bad days start at 30-40%). During the weekends I generally sleep better and can start the day with 70%-80%. Is it helpful to know all these? Seriously debatable. But some days when I feel utterly exhausted at 6pm, it is comforting (in a weird way) to see my body battery at a mere 7%. It’s validation – you have a solid red day so you should be exhausted. It has helped me be more sensitive to what drains me. But it’s hard when most things I do are the most draining things. For example, solid red times are almost always class, when I’m researching, writing, studying, running analyses and basically anything to do with school, Zoom calls, and always social or church events with more than 1 or 2 other people. Meeting with clients are orange times. (As I’m typing this, my watch just told me I should take a breather.) So it is discouraging that most of my life is all of those times. And sometimes I want to tell it, “I’m trying! I’m breathing! I’m trying to relax!” It’s always fun to find yourself yelling at a digital device. Ironically, the times I’m generally most relaxed according to my watch is when I’m scrolling on Instagram. “Not helpful Watch!” But I have begun to differentiate between helpful stress and hard stress. Talking to a friend can show up as high-ish stress, but it supplies me in a different way. Going swimming of course drains the body battery, but I need the physical activity and the social interaction to keep me going. I recognize that one thing my watch can’t get metrics on is my happiness or the buoyancy that comes from a deep, intellectual conversation. So, I take it all with a grain of salt and have a fun time comparing body batteries with my husband.
One-liners
Is what you’re about to do or say leading you towards or away from your values?
Something you learned
“Unfortunately, today’s stress is not an occasional, five-minute fight for survival, but a nonstop series of daily pressures. In fact, experts estimate that today, the average person’s fight-or-flight system switches on and off 30 to 50 times daily, compared to just once or twice daily for our cavemen cousins who lived in much more physically dangerous times. Research shows that repeated activation of the fight-or-flight response, which is built to protect the body from brief physical dangers in the short run, can cause wear and tear on your body when it is triggered on and off over a long time. False alarms can lead to physical problems such as muscle aches, headaches, stomach problems, chest pains, depression, and diabetes. Long-term stress stemming from job or family problems can even increase your chances of catching a cold by weakening your immune system. If these symptoms sound familiar, you should know that you aren’t alone. Experts estimate that medical conditions aggravated by stress account for 75% of all visits to physicians.” – Dr. Jeffrey M. Lackner from “Controlling IBS the Drug-Free Way”
Describe/write something
It’s 7:30AM. Dog walked? Check. I stood at the kitchen island, my eyes darting around as my brain rolled through the constant list in my head. “Make lunch. Take a shower. Take medication. Decide what to wear. Pack lunch. Check the weather. Move my work bag from the office to the stairs. Think of something for breakfast. Text my friend. Doggie snacks. Eat. You have to leave at 8:20.” I shook my head, trying to stop the running list. “Ok,” I told myself. “Choose one. Motion. You need motion.” I closed my eyes, feeling my heartbeat racing and that buzzing, jittery feeling in my chest. “Shower,” I thought. “Shower first, and everything will follow.” I turned around to start walking towards my room when my eyes snagged on the drying laundry. “Oh shoot. I need to fold those.” I walked towards them. “No, you don’t have time.” I hesitated. “Okay, just grab them and put them on the bed.” I nodded to myself and sighed. I checked my watch. 7:35AM. “Shower,” I told myself as I grabbed the dry clothes. “You need to shower.”
You choose!
I dream of days in a glass office on the top floor, looking out at the ocean with a mug of something warm, a snoozing dog, and a comfy chair. I dream of writing beautiful, meaningful things, although I will say that the image of a laptop or computer takes away from the dreaminess. Will AI ever get to the point where it can just read my mind and type it out for me? I guess that sounds more like a robot. Oh, that reminds me that I got a cool little update on that e-ink device I backed! Hopefully it will come in the summer. Typing away on a keyboard without having to look at a screen or think too much about my writing – now that does a better job at melding with the dream aspect. And while we’re dreaming, lets add some COLD WEATHER and maybe even some snow on the rocky beach. And a cozy little fireplace going, snuggly slippers, a sweatshirt and a soft blanket. There we go. Dreaming commenced.
Something hard
PhD’s are hard. And self-motivating through all the unknowns is hard. It feels like walking blindfolded on an uneven, rocky terrain with drop-offs all around. There’s a lot of independence in PhD’s as the years go on and I’m entering that phase right now. It’s so nice to have a little bit more flexibility with my time, but then it gets filled up with all the less tangible (but absolutely necessary) to-do’s I need to complete. Why is it that I’m so much more motivated when someone assigns me something for class, versus a research paper on my own timeline or a programmatic milestone that has a due date months away?