#22 - Rest as Self Care
Welcome to the now 121 subscribers in our community. For those of you who have been riding along for the last 21 weeks - there wasn’t a huge surge in subscribers. As I noted, I wanted to move the newsletter to my new website which kind of happened. After MUCH testing, I decided to go back to Substack as my newsletter provider and simply link to it from my new website. The move meant that I picked up about 40 subscribers who were subscribers to my old newsletter. For those of you who’ve been hanging out here on Substack - apologies for abandoning you - but I’m back now!
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Photo of the Week
I plan to start adding a photo from around my world each week. This week, Kona and I are celebrating that our car now reflects our shared passion to help animals. Kona is also quite happy that HIS car is now appropriately identified. If you see us cruising around the state, feel free to honk and wave. Excuse my car for needing a good washing!
Rest as Self Care
I had a couple of nights of poor sleep last week. It’s unusual for me as I normally sleep very well. I know I’m luckier than many as I know lots of people who battle with sleep. While I think a lot of us think of massages and mani/pedis as self-care the most real forms of self care are those things that genuinely nourish our bodies and minds. One of the most important of those is rest.
Sleep is just one form of rest. I believe sleep disorders are hard to solve, but I’ll share a little wisdom here to form a healthy sleep habit AND talk about a few other types of rest that you might add to your life to deepen your own understanding of rest as a form of self care.
Form a healthy sleep habit
It’s easy to say that I’ve gotten more sleep in the last six months than I probably have in the last three years combined. I go to bed earlier and get up later and I wake up in the night far less than I ever did before. I’ve never had to be diligent about my sleep routine but there are a few things that have worked for me in the past when I’ve had periods of restlessness or difficulty going to sleep.
Keep a standard bedtime
There is a reason we set bedtimes for kids. It actually helps you sleep better. As an adult, I’ve found I need to set some alarms for myself in the evening to make sure I don’t shoot way past my desired bedtime.
Move more and eat well
This phrase came from scrapbooker Cathy Zielske and it has become a life motto for me. It’s one I don’t live up to very well but it’s still there and important to me. Getting regular exercise - nothing big - even just a 1 mile walk once a day and eating healthy foods on a reasonable schedule can improve your sleep.
Download your thoughts
Your brain is a great place for having ideas. It’s not that great a place to store them. Whether you journal a bit to get out some tension or hostility or you simply need to keep a notepad by your bed in order to write down something that wakes you up in the middle of the night it’s important to realize that the best place to store your thoughts is NOT your subconscious.
Add other forms of rest to your life
In addition to developing a good sleep habit, there are other forms of rest that we should try to add to our life. Before you say, “Kara - there is no way I can do these things” - you may be very right. Your life might not allow for them right now. But, if you’re never thinking about them and/or you’re never trying to figure out how to make them happen they certainly won’t happen.
Meditate
Meditation is a wonderful way to bring rest into even the most hectic moments of your life. While it may not bring about true physical rest, a solid meditation practice gives your busy mind a rest. Meditation sometimes helps me go to sleep at night when I am having an infrequent struggle with sleep. It also has been an incredible tool for me to reduce physical pain. I’ve found that a simple body scan meditation with my coffee can help me connect with my body and reduce my pain. If you’ve never meditated before, Netflix has a series from Headspace that is very good. I also really like Dan Harris’s 10 percent happier and the Insight Timer app.
Take a Nap
I LOVE naps. While most research says you should aim for a short nap, I’m what my friend Gayle calls a “day sleeper”. If I lay down for a nap, it’s usually going to be a 60 minute+ affair. That said, even laying down and closing my eyes for 20 minutes and never falling asleep has given me enormous benefits. Naps aren’t just for weekends. I used to come home from the office and take a 20 minute rest before I got started with the evening.
Go on a personal retreat
I’ve taken two personal retreats in the last six months - everything from just a few hours to a whole weekend. These are days I intentionally leave unscheduled so that I can engage in activities like exercise, a specific learning activity, or personal planning - just to name a few. Personal retreats can involve a specific goal but they don’t have to. I took several writing retreats during my doctoral program in order to make time for major projects.
Take a sabbatical
Like a personal retreat, a sabbatical is typically a time of unscheduled dedication to a specific activity or set of activities. Sabbaticals are typically at least a week long and can sometimes span months. Sabbaticals often have a specific goal that you are trying to complete or at least make significant progress on. I know pastors who have taken study and prayer sabbaticals, academics who have taken research and writing sabbaticals and professionals who have taken research sabbaticals. I believe that making a sabbatical “restful” requires filling the time in the sabbatical with activities that you will find joy in.
Tips, Tools, & Tricks
Pill Identifier
I did a dumb thing recently. Thankfully, I realized my mistake - and now you get to benefit from my learning.
I picked up my prescriptions at the store and brought them home. Confronted with 8 new bottles for 4 scripts (p.s. - why did they put a blister pack into a pill bottle? I undid all the blisters and condensed them down to one bottle).
In addition to de-blister packing this script, I also put all of my old meds into the new bottles so I could get rid of more bottles. Unfortunately, I combined two medications that can best be described as small, white, oval pill.
I take meds out of a small travel case each night so thankfully, when I refilled that last night, I realized my error. One of those small white ovals is slightly larger than the other so I realized I had two different pills in the same bottle. Question now? WHICH IS WHICH?
Enter WebMD’s Pill Identifier: https://www.webmd.com/pill-identification/default.htm. I entered a description of the pill and the little code imprinted on it and soon everything was back in a correctly labeled bottle and I was on my way.
I’m lucky to have a nurse and two pharmacists on speed dial should I ever really screw this up and can’t use the pill identifier. But, if you don’t have that luxury, this feels like an important link to keep handy.
What I published this week
It was a pretty busy week this week.
I launched my new website at
Gayle and I finished publishing our trip blog from our recent 7 night Disney Cruise. You can find all of those posts on my website using this link: https://www.iwannabemewhenigrowup.com/blog/tags/fantasy-ta-surprise-suite-16
I published a video on YouTube about workspaces in Obsidian:
I finally published my walk through the Richmond Indiana Rose Garden
And, I published an article on how work is not life and life is not work.
What I’m Reading This Week
I’ve still been doing a ton of reading on curiosity for a client project. I’ve been doing so much reading that I didn’t have time to really get into any new books. I am re-reading/reviewing How to Think like Leonardo Davinci and Kill the Company.
Diversion
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor movies are not my favorite - although I do love Tom Hiddleston (a.k.a. Loki). That said, Thor: Love and Thunder opened this past week. I can’t bring myself to watch a Thor retrospective before seeing the film so I have googled a few great moments from Thor movies of the past. This is one of my favorite roundups.
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