Doing things that feel hard is hard

And other groundbreaking revalations

I keep waking up after exactly 8 hours of sleep. I can’t work out if this is a good thing or not. Sometimes I marvel at how strong and stubborn my body clock can be. Digging its nails in whether I like it or not. Got up at 2 am to go for a wee because you had a hot chocolate before bed? Congratulations! You’ll now be up for a piss at 2 am from now, until the day you dare to train yourself out of it.

I guess you could say I am going through another stubborn body clock phase. It’s not all that surprising, given that we are now back to work after 2 blissful weeks of sofa and snack time and snoozing, reacquainted with the constant low-level anxiety that accompanies an emails based job.

It takes a second to get used to it. Did I always feel like this? Yes you did, yes you did. And don’t they say that the body keeps the score?

This year at least, the pressure is being applied by me and my own goals rather than being applied more directly by an unreasonable client with big projects and tight deadlines. The pressure is more like how your head can feel sore after you’ve worn your hair up for too long, vs. a pressure more like someone's thumb pressing down on the space between your eyebrows.

Maybe I do only need 8 hours of sleep a night?

In order to add to my laundry list of cliches, I am doing dry January. Or really, don’t get drunk January - but one drink usually leads to too many so may as well try to keep it dry. I decided sort of on a whim after a particularly bad hangover, but it has fully crept into my consciousness and is taking up a lot of space in my brain.

I’ve started watching TikTok videos (any excuse) of people in similar situations to me (started drinking at 14 and never looked back), and feel genuinely curious about where this experiment might take me. I’m just going to caveat this now by saying there is every chance you might find me in a grotty pub in Dalston at 2 am this weekend - but I will say - I feel more determined to do this than I ever have before.

Consistency has always been an alien concept to me. It is probably the thing about me that I like the least. That and my natural aversion to literally any sport. I do sometimes ponder where I might be if only I had a tiny speck of whatever drive and resilience leads a person to become a bodybuilder, or create a genuinely useful product, or lead a country. But that isn’t me - perhaps my skills lie elsewhere - so we will never know will we.

What I will say, is that I can already see tiny traces of what life might look like if I finally stopped prioritising hedonism over everything else. Guys, I have been riding my bike to work (scary!) and have started responding to emails in a timely manner(somehow scarier!) Annoyingly I guess it is TRUE what everyone has been saying for literally ever - that one good habit turns into 2, turns into 3, turns into a lifestyle.

Of course, it makes sense. I mean obviously it makes sense. If I had a child, I wouldn’t just take it to a birthday party every weekend and let it get off its tiny nut on sweets and fondant icing. I’d want them to experience the full spectrum of human life. Take them swimming, or to a museum, encourage them to look at books instead of staring at a screen.

Last year, it’s safe to say that my subconscious was turned into a spoilt brat. The kind of child you might find screeching down Chatsworth Road, incredulous that its mum hadn’t bought them tapenade from that posh French deli. Don’t get me wrong - I had a lot of fun. And I am a big defender of fun. It keeps you young, and light, and helps you work out what actually matters to you.

But I suppose this is me admitting to myself, or realising things like 2016 Kylie Jenner, that I let the fun dominate too much. Like a diet of only sweets - rotting your molars and leaving you ultimately crashing. Maybe for a little while, or for January at LEAST (god help me), I’m going to check out what all the fuss around balance is about. One day at a time. Focus, focus.

Jess the toad in the hole x