To Tumblr With Love Xx

you will find someone that feels like home

you will learn how to love yourself more

you will heal from things that make you sad or anxious

you will reach goals that seem scary and unrealistic to you right now

you will see life in a much softer or warmer light

How to Fix your Sleep Schedule

We’ve all been there. You’ve been pushing back your bedtime for an entire week and now you feel exhausted and you don’t think you can function as well as you normally could. You just want to get enough sleep again, but how?

Make small changes

It’s a lot easier to push back your bedtime than to push it forward—but it’s not impossible. You just have to take it step by step. Go to sleep 15-30 minutes earlier every night until you reach your desired bedtime. You could try going to sleep much earlier than your regular time, but according that doesn’t usually work out. If you’re waking up later than you want to, you might also want to try waking up 15 minutes earlier each morning until you get up at the desired time.

I remember there was a week this semester when I went to sleep at 1am for several days in a row (I usually sleep at 11). I was sleep deprived and exhausted and I tried to sleep at 8 to catch up on lost sleep, but I couldn’t. I just laid in my bed for an hour until I gave up trying to sleep and decided to work on some homework until I felt sleepy again. What I should’ve done was go to bed 15 minutes earlier each night until I could go to sleep at 11 again.

Adjust exposure to sunlight

Exposure to adequate amounts of sunlight is key to helping our bodies maintain their circadian rhythm, which is the process that regulates our energy levels during the day and tells us when to be awake and when to go to sleep. Sunlight helps our body produce optimal levels of melatonin, a hormone that makes us feel sleepy at night. Studies have shown that people get better quality sleep in the summer because there is a greater exposure to light.

That being said, you should expose yourself to more light during the day to get better sleep at night. This might mean waking up earlier so you don’t miss hours of sunlight in the morning.

At night, you should reduce your exposure to any sort of light - both natural and artificial - so that your body knows it’s time to not be awake. I personally turn down the lights (and only have my fairy lights on) after 10:30 pm. When you’re trying to get back into your desired sleep schedule, you could aim to turn down the lights 30 minutes before your desired bedtime for that day.

Don’t eat too close to bedtime

You should wait 2 - 3 hours between dinner/your last meal and bedtime. I would talk about how studies show that eating too close to bedtime can possibly damage your health, e.g. causing reflux when you’re lying down, but that’s all been said before. The only thing I’d like to reiterate is that you sleep better when you wait after you eat. But as for my own logic on why you shouldn’t go to sleep when you’re full…

When you wait a few hours after you’ve had your last meal, before you go to bed, you won’t go to bed full, meaning that in the morning, you’re likely to be hungry. I don’t know about you, but I can’t go back to sleep when I’m, like, starving, so being hungry when I wake up causes me to resist sleeping in.

Don’t sleep in

You would think that sleeping in is, in fact, good for catching up on sleep. In reality, it doesn’t make you stop sleeping late, since you’d probably still spend the same amount of time awake. Instead, once you wake up, you should stay up, and don’t go back to sleep. You’re likely to get sleepy at an earlier time, and this will help you push forward your bedtime.

Resist napping

Resisting naps also has a similar logic to not sleeping in. If you take a nap, you’ll feel more energetic and night, and you might not be able to fall asleep as soon as you wanted to. If you resist taking a nap, however, you’ll be more tired at night, and you’ll fall asleep more easily.

Be strict with yourself

Finally, the key to having a good, consistent sleep schedule is to be strict with yourself. Don’t let yourself stay up for just 5 more minutes because you still have a ‘small’ task to take care of. When it’s time to end the day, end the day.

Maybe it’s hard for you to be strict with yourself since you can’t justify going to sleep over completing whatever task or responsibility you have left. Well, here’s my logic:

You could stay up 5 more minutes and risk extending that to a few hours or so in attempt to finish something. There’s no guarantee that you’ll finish it, and you might just lose all those precious hours of sleep for nothing, since you’ll wake up in the morning tired and unable to effectively do the task you wanted to do; or

You could stop everything you’re doing and sleep on it. You wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and clear-headed and ready to tackle on your tasks for the day. You find a new way to think about the task you were stuck on, and you finally solve it in less than half an hour.

I do realize that this only applies if the task isn’t super urgent. Let’s say you have a project due 11:59 PM and you’re rushing to finish that. In this case, the core problem is probably something else: an inability to manage your time, or procrastination. If that’s the case, you might want to check out my posts on how to beat procrastination and how to create an efficient (revision) schedule. The latter post is tailored for exam preparation, but the main ideas are the same for general scheduling (there’s a recap at the bottom if you just want to know the main ideas).

Additionally, you might wanna check out my post on my night routine.

one: pay attention to the music you’re relating to. sometimes it’s a clear indicator that something is wrong. other times, it’s an indicator that something is very, very right. when the latter happens, pay extra close attention.

two: true control is subtle, not obsessive. you may not even know that you have it when you do. people who are in control do not question it. they just are.

three: never pass up the opportunity to stick the tips of your fingers out the window of a moving car. feel the wind carry you to the sound of your favorite songs. this is a reminder that you’re alive.

four: thoughts don’t have to mean anything. you can just let them be there.

five: notice when you’re struggling and allow yourself some leeway when you do. however, learn the difference between giving yourself leeway and enabling your struggle. 

six: you cannot build self-love from a foundation of self-hatred. first, work toward self-acceptance. love will follow.

seven: do not love others simply because they love you back. do not expend your love on people who won’t love you back. 

eight: don’t forget to stop and look around. take a moment a day to stop doing and just be. the mindfulness hype isn’t overrated. there’s a reason for it.

nine: setting limits and saying no will not end any relationship worth keeping. 

ten: friendships built on moments of competitive misery are not healthy. if you find that you’re having the urge to constantly showcase your misery around someone, take that as a red flag. sadness is not a competition you want to win.

eleven: recovery is not about being happy. some days you will feel bored and flat. but these days are still better than those you built around destroying yourself. these days are still victories. recovery is about being alive.

twelve: when you’ve built an identity around being sad, the concept of happiness may scare you. giving that sadness up will strip you of most everything and leave you feeling empty. embrace this emptiness and fill it up with exploration. you’ll find that it’s worth it.

“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”

I didn’t get the job.

However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.

So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.

clean your room.  clean space, uncluttered space, space that doesn’t have miasma clinging to it can work wonders.  clean the dishes.  sweep.  take out the trash.  peel the clothes off the floor and wash them, and then actually fold/hang them.  take a long shower.  scrub behind your knees.  brush your teeth.  (this can be utterly exhausting, but try to get it done in a day, if you can.  the end result is worth it.)

pull out your notebook.  it doesn’t need to be a new notebook, but preferably one that you don’t usually write in, or that you haven’t touched in a while.  fuck moleskins.  the yellow legal pad will work fine.  sit in your room, or in the park, or in the library, and write a list.  count clouds.  describe all the colors that you see, and note patterns that arise.  sketch the cracks in the walls.  note the shape light makes when it enters a space.  talk about what the air tastes like, smells like.  what sounds are there?  even the white nose, break that down: air planes, fans, cicadas, anything.  remind yourself that you are sitting in the middle of a space brimming with detail.  remind yourself that you are not in nothingness and emptiness.  your world is fathomless.  it has potential.

drink cold water and try to eat something that isn’t processed.  it does not need to be fancy.  buy yourself an apple with the change between your couch cushions.  eat it outside.  if you’re someone who walks, walk somewhere afterwards, just to stretch your legs.  take your fucking meds.  remember that its a good thing that you are inside your body.  your body is a fantastic and endlessly intricate machine, and even though society has smacked a bunch of poisonous ideas on it, that doesn’t change its inherent worth and splendor.  take care of it.

read a novel.  underline your favorite lines, and write phrases that twist your heart inside your chest on the back of your hand with an ink pen.  read a novel like it’s poetry.  read poetry, something decadent but unpretentious.  watch a movie you haven’t seen before.  if there are free art galleries near you, walk through one.  take your time.  let yourself bask.  if there are patterns in what makes your soul ache, write those patterns down – marbles arches or soot crumbling bricks or dandelions or descriptions of dresses or whatever it is, write them down.

your chosen family is important.  remember, they picked you as much as you picked them.  the love has no obligation.  it is given freely and it is given from a place of compassion.  you are not a burden.  if you need to breathe, take a minute by yourself and just exist, but remember to go back to your people.  when they need you, listen and be gracious.  always be gracious.  the universe sometimes remembers things like that.

listen to new music.  link jump on youtube or related artist jump on spotify or ask the chap beside you in the cafe what their favorite band is, and listen to that.  listen to something that you don’t usually listen to.  we tend to tie up a lot of memory with music.  we are falling in love again.  the soundtrack needs to be specific to that.  

Pacific Coast “All-American” Highway - circa 1972