Days of Our Lives: This Day, This Moment in Time

A Dickens of a Time: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." as Mr. Dickens cites, a Tale of Two Cities, that is, a historical novel published in 1859, in part recounting conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror (and you think we live in divisive times, read on!). In any case, I lead with this famous quote today to acknowledge and illustrate that we all have times in our lives that we can cite as being the best and worst, sometimes occurring in tandem (e.g. "it was both a blessing and a curse"). We can also testify what times of each day tend to be our most, least favorite, when we tend to be at our best, or not-so-much. When our personal anxiety and/or sadness rears its head more. Depending on your age, you have become well aware of your own personal circadian rhythms and their implications for energy, productivity, and variations in moods. Over the last year, many of us have had them thrown off some (well, to be more honest, we sort of did it to ourselves, right?), and experienced the results. 

Animal Kingdom - You and Me: Are you, by nature, more of a diurnal (of, or during the day, active during the daytime) or, are you a nocturnal creature, creeping out of your house (masked or not) after dark, or otherwise claiming to be a night owl, doing your best language arts homework near or after midnight, disproving your grandmother's claim that "nothing good happens after 11 PM". Or, perhaps you align yourself with others in the crepuscular crowd, who tend to show up shortly before the nocturnals, at dusk or near the 'twilight zone'--if you identify with the latter group I press you to tell us just a bit more about yourself: are you more of a matutinal or vespertine crespy...predisposed to either before sunrise or after sunset, respectively? Finally, you might like to join the fraternity with me that is neither prescriptively nocturnal, diurnal, nor crepuscular, but active/awake for periods during the night or day, according to prevailing circumstances...us cathemerals! But choose wisely, according to what your mother informed you, like when you more active even in the womb, what your early sleep/wake cycles were like early on, and your subsequent preferred circadian rhythms. If you decide to join me, you'll have to get good at 'combat naps', sleeping brief at night, ready for anything...sounds like fun eh? 

Out of Sync X 3: I've presented here before about the 3 building blocks of life, sometimes referred to as ADL's and other times as vegetative functions (you don't have to be a vegetarian or vegan to appreciate the critical roles of these for your well-being). If your sleep/wake cycle, or appetite/eating patterns, or your level of activity/energy pattern is remarkably altered, it can easily destabilize the others and create 'homeostasis interruptus' We have all experienced at least a bit of this condition the last several months, due to the unforeseen, unexpected, and under-preparation associated with the COVID conditions...the sudden or gradual erosion of any of the foregoing primary functions/building blocks has important implications for our mental and physical well-being, and it's worth the effort to get them back in sync, whatever that means in your particular situation. Simple by design, but not necessarily easy to implement consistently and over a sustained period of time. The good news is that the resources and strategies to regain our footing, to find traction, tune-up, get into good rhythm, are largely under our control; it's up to us to do...

Re-Set: "Make Your Bed"! Yep, it's as easy as this (as the retired Navy SEAL, William McRaven, reminds us in his book by the same name): to get up at a semi-regular time--if your sleep-wake cycle has gotten out of whack, if you have started binge watching Netflix all night while binging otherwise, the only way to reverse this is to force yourself to start getting up rather than playing possum all day (or the reverse in the case of a nocturnal worker)...and to also start your day by doing something you can take a morsel of pride in (hence, "make your bed"), which might in turn lead to a chain of behaviors, good habits throughout your day, Speaking of good habits, resuming or starting and sustaining a rigorous exercise regimen is another accessible building block--as I have written about many times here before, accessible no matter what our pandemic circumstances, limited only by our willingness and imaginations. And eating at reasonably regular intervals, reasonable quantities based on your energy output (e.g. your level of exercise), and what you know instinctively are decent foods (not excluding chocolate chip cookies, of course!)...

Back In Sync: "Back in Sync": provides rehabilitative treatments..."Installing Sync and Backup in Windows"..."Get Back in Sexual Sync" from Harvard Health..."Falling Back in Sync with Yourself, Your Partner":...being synchronized, having each others backs (literally here)...ebbs and flows...what we learned about each other in our acroyoga  practice" (talk about bodies in motion--check it out!). Being 'in sync' has different meanings for all of us, depending on where we are in life, our pandemic circumstances, and what kind of 'animal' we identify with...

In celebration of all you animals out there--wishing you all well, that you get back in sync real soon, before 'the end of the day'!