Day 7

Well, it has been interesting to see how my mind has reacted to my new refusal to snooze the alarm. First, I have pretty much settled into taking ten minutes to even acknowledge the alarm clock meaning as soon as the alarm goes off, my brain shuts off listening to it for a bit, like snoozing in advance. Second, since Monday, my mind has also worked to convince me that I have already snoozed it, and that having blown it, I might a well come back to bed. I am refusing this since I give my rational mind long enough to wake and note that I do not remember actually snoozing it. I have always managed to at least remember doing this. Third, and this is the weirdest of them all, I dream about sleeping. I dream about snoozing the alarm clock and going back to bed. I have dreamed about oversleeping and not caring about it.

When I think about this, it makes some level of warped sense. Major detractors to breaking any habit involve the brain finding comfort in routine. Any break in that routine, no matter whether that break is for better or worse, is met with stark rebellion from the subconscious mind. Well, I am depriving the mind of extra sleep, and I've worked this snooze thing to an art. I can shut off the sound of the alarm clock for several minutes, which is why i've always had more than one alarm clock. The hope was that the different sounds would mess with my head and I'd get up. No, turns out I can block them all out. The most effective thing I do is turning the alarm off. I am too tired to care about resetting it.

The one thing I have found I need to do is something. That's not a placeholder for my train of thought, that is a literal something. It could be watching a movie or writing this blog. It just needs to be something for me to focus on while I try to wake up after denying my subconscious the sleep it thinks it needs. Otherwise, I will simply move from location A to location B and snooze out again.

I'm sure this all must seem very silly, but any habit is significant to the person who has it. Whether you like it or not, everything you do routinely is a habit (we just normally call it a routine, because hey, we like synonyms for stuff). I routinely go to work Monday thru Friday. I routinely drive a certain path every day. I routinely put on my pants and tie my shoes a certain way. If you always do something, then congratulations, you have a habit. We don't think of it that way because the word habit tends to get a negative connotation associated with biting fingernails, spitting, and smoking (among lots of other things). However, by definition, any routine is a habit right down to the time you ALWAYS go to bed.

So 7 days down, 59 to go. I am surviving this, and I'm sure my mind will start to rebel more fiercely as I move on.