Getting Over Energy Slumps
As a person suffering from chronic pain and fatigue issues, one big hurdle I face constantly is the lack of energy after spending a lot of time over a few days. After a long day of activity and a lack of sleep, it is essential to take breaks when needed. Burnout is a constant threat in my everyday life.
My current professional goal is to be fully self-employed. Balancing tasks and pre-planning is extremely important in cases like mine. I need to get into a habit of trying to make a routine and schedule. This way, I know when I can do things such as hang out with friends or travel. I took a day trip to London recently and was exhausted afterward. The fact I did not sleep well the night before did not help things. The flare that was created because of this made me realize that I needed to change. There are various bad habits that I need to get under control to meet my goals.
One major habit to break is watching YouTube late at night. I get so enthralled in various rabbit holes that I do not realize that time has gone past midnight. To fix this issue, I have made the YouTube app remind me when to stop watching and sleep at 9 PM. It gives me no more excuses at night, as it lets me finish whatever video I am watching and tells me to go to bed immediately afterward. I must remember to watch only a short video at night. To add to this, I also added a silent alarm to remind me it's time to start falling asleep at 10 PM. I work three days a week for the NHS as a temporary BANK administrator at Poole Hospital, so all I need to do is use the other two days a week for my professional self-employment journey.
To follow my routine, I wake up no later than 8 AM on the days I am not working during the week. I set a second alarm at 10 AM to know when to start working. I dedicate the first day off to crafts such as soap making and resin as I plan to sell resin and then soap when I am UK-certified to sell. The second full day is dedicated to freelancing and other kinds of writing. I will search on Upwork, work on Fivver if I can, work on my projects (such as my books and this blog), and create my voice-over demos to begin doing narration and voice-acting work on both sites and other sites I can find for voice work. I will also physically leave my flat to go to a coffee shop, a library, or somewhere else for writing since I have trouble concentrating in my flat due to various distractions. The restaurants where I live allow dogs, which distracts me, but I am still more productive when listening to instrumental music with my noise-canceling headphones.
In order to keep my sleep in check, I will follow the same schedule with the exception of Mondays, when I play Dungeons and Dragons with friends until 10 PM, and soon on Tuesdays, when I will attend Society meetings once more with my friends as alumni. I am also attempting to avoid caffeine and sugary sweets as they mess with my sleep since I tend to stay awake longer if I consume such things during the day. It should also help with my pain, as sugar (outside of fruit) causes my inflammation to get worse.
This new schedule should help me not only with my chronic pain condition but also with my ADD since an actual routine makes it a lot easier to handle things and keep things organized. While I will leave my flat for writing, I will stay at my own home for resin, soap making, and voice-over work (since I need quiet and my equipment).
