One of the website articles I’m editing at work right now is a Q&A written by a sleep expert at The Royal. Dr. Lee and I first met when I interviewed him for this article about sleep trackers. We had a really good conversation, after which I did a lot of reading on the topic. I am fascinated by sleep. I think we all know that we feel lousy when we haven’t slept well, but many don’t understand that it is a critical element of our daily functioning, physical, and mental health.
One of the things he mentioned in his recent Q&A is something he called worry time. Basically, you give yourself permission – and a limited period of time ever day – to worry. You set aside a time to write things down, make to-do lists, itemize worries (whether they are rational or not), and then close the book on them. CLOSE.THE.BOOK. And when it’s not worry time, you just tell your brain, hey brain, save it for worry time.
His advice reminded of my coronavirus chronicle (a.k.a. my paper diary) in which I describe our comings and goings and family updates. I didn’t really think about it as worry time, but that’s essentially what it is. It’s an end-of-day brain dump that is remarkably calming.
The idea of setting certain thoughts aside is also echoed in Chel Hamilton’s mini-meditations, which I have enjoyed listening to for the past few months. I used to wonder why, in a guided meditation, participants aren’t asked to disregard or totally ignore intrusive thoughts. Instead, it is gently suggested we (1) acknowledge that our brains are doing what they are supposed to do (e.g. THINK ABOUT STUFF), and then (2) set aside those thoughts for the duration of the meditation. In one of her podcasts, Chel instructs listeners to imagine themselves putting those “buckets of junk” aside and picking them up later if they choose to do so. What I’ve learned that this is not just a nice sentiment, but by acknowledging that intrusive thought and then dismissing it, you are actually training your brain. It’s a mental push-up that builds a kind of resilience, which is actually pretty cool.
I sometimes choose to imagine intrusive thoughts as bubbles that I dismiss with the flick of a finger. Sometimes, when my brain wakes me up in the middle of the night I imagine those thoughts as dirt on a carpet. I run the vacuum cleaner over them again and again, until I eventually fall asleep.
Earlier this week we placed an order for grocery pick up at the Superstore. I had figured we might not get the toilet paper we wanted, or the disinfectant wipes, but I did NOT think the store would run out of chocolate. I ordered a couple Lindt bars and didn’t get them! The store normally makes a substitution if one item isn’t available, for another item that is similar. Well, there was no substitution made so we had nothing. NO. CHOCOLATE.
I should clarify that I’m not exactly a huge fan of chocolate. Generally speaking, if there’s a bowl of potato chips in front of me, and a bar of chocolate, I’ll take the chips, but since we are living in Unprecedented Times, anything is possible.
Thankfully, our lives haven’t been entirely devoid of chocolate. The youngest baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies that fit the bill. Here’s the recipe she used. IT IS VERY GOOD.
We also got our chocolate fix another way. I placed an order online with terra20** and tossed some Camino chocolate bars into the cart at the last minute. My friends, this chocolate is da bomb. (I ordered this one but they’re sold out for now. Boo! But there are other flavours still available if you are having similar cravings.)
All this got me thinking again about the groceries we’ve been buying, the lists we are making. There’s lots of good stuff in in those lists, bothperishable and non-. Healthy foods! Foods that can fill us up! But I realized it’s also important to make sure treats are part of that list too, just so we can feel a bit more normal.
**terra20 is promoting free same-day shipping if you make your purchase M-F and order more than $50 worth of merch. Details are here.
It’s interesting how much we think about contagion now. I think about it when I press the button to cross the street, touch the handle of a donation bin as I drop a bag of clothing inside, touch anything. I even thought about whether I needed gloves to handle the grocery bags that were loaded into our car yesterday. (In the end, I did put on gloves. Mark and the youngest unloaded them and washed their hands afterwards.)
On Twitter I mentioned picking up garbage while on our daily walk outdoors. I thought this was such a productive, community-minded thing to do. In response I got a couple of warnings about catching something. I seriously doubt that there is coronavirus lurking on the Tim Horton’s cup that was buried under four feet of snow all winter. Besides, if/when I pick up litter I would wear gardening gloves and use our garbage-picking claw anyway.
Another time I talked about resurrecting the lost art of letter-writing. Again, people responded with trepidation. For the record, postage stamps are self-adhesive now. But the envelopes? Maybe postcards are safer.
Another time I wrote about dropping books off at a mini-library. You know the ones that people put on their front lawns, for neighbours to take a book or leave a book? Most people thought this was a bad idea.
The coronavirus story is changing on an hourly basis, so it’s hard to be confident about how we move around in the world right now. But maybe it’s better to be safe than sorry, right?
