self-care goal: quiet the noise in your head
self-care goal: get good sleep
So, I’m a little late with this post as I actually held myself to my goal from Monday and went to bed before 11. Barely, but I did it. Tonight I’m going to try for before 10:45. Baby steps.
Before sleep last night, I spent a few minutes spiraling in my journal. See, I sometimes get to ruminating, running the same things over and over in my head, and then I can’t turn it off enough to go to sleep. And when I finally do get to sleep, the same things will pop up in my dreams. Or I’ll have really restless sleep. I’ve been really good lately about working through this stuff (movement is a huge help), but yesterday it crept in anyway. I do this exercise I read about in Picture This by Lynda Barry, where you draw spirals to help you work through something. Spirals in and spirals out. It’s one of my favorite quick techniques for processing through something.
So, last night before bed I filled a page of my journal with spirals. I used a fine point marker and it made really satisfying lines:
After spiraling, I read a few poems from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde because I wasn’t quite ready for bed. With school starting, I don’t have the time I’d like any more for leisure reading, but I’m trying to start a new ritual of reading a poem or two at night so that I still get to do some reading for pleasure. Then it was lights out at 10:53 and a solid night’s sleep.
What do you do to clear your head?
What are your bedtime rituals?
Radical Self-Love 