Grr! Car routines.

Hmph, three days off and I couldn’t remember to actually set up a routine for getting up out of the car after naps. So after several successful Precise Naps, including last night’s core, I go and screw it up by resetting the timer for five more minutes after my 9 a.m. nap. (I only slept for that five minutes, but still, that ruins it as a “Precise Nap”.) The car is tricky because it’s cooooold, and I’m nice and warm in my sleeping bag! Plus, of course, whatever my routine is, other people are going to see it.

It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with how I’ve been sleeping, but I want to write about Everyman as a definable schedule, and I want to eventually (after this hellish semester is over, probably) try reducing my core time and seeing what the boundaries are for flexibility; and neither of those things can be done until I’m keeping as regular of a schedule as humanly possible. “Nap shift” is unavoidable for me, but nap length should be as solid as I can get it, at least for a while. Hence my “Precise Nap” fetish. I insert this paragraph so that you other polyphasers realize that this is not something you necessarily have to do, though I do think that a wake-up routine could benefit everybody (even monophasers, really).

So. Car routine:

Sit up. Shut off timer on dashboard. Stretch.
Open door, stand up, close door, take five [edit: three. five takes too long] deep breaths. (Good opportunity to practice dan t’ien stomach breathing from Tai Chi.)

Walk as briskly as possible back to the building. Get a drink of water on the way back up.

Okay, let’s see if that works. ;) My house routine, by the way, is similar to that: Get up, walk across room, shut off alarm (I have my radio alarm across the room, and my RIIIIIING! alarm right by my head, set for five minutes later, just in case — It hasn’t rung in two days!). Stretch. Take five deep breaths (I plan to modify that to the Four Directions breathing/meditation/prayer/thingy from Tai Chi as soon as I learn it better). Go upstairs for bathroom/shower/coffee cup/whatever, even just to pet the cats. Then I come right back downstairs and do something fun first thing, even if it’s something stupid like reading porn (what? doesn’t everybody? ;)  or playing computer games. It doesn’t have to last long, but I’ve figured out that if I wake up and have to work or study right off, it acts as incentive to stay in bed! (Nothing I can really do about having to wake up in the car and go right back up to work, but I suppose if I need extra oomph, I can let myself write a haiku or post or something before I get back to the grind.)

I’d love to know what anybody else’s routines are as well, both for my own enlightenment and to eventually compile a list of useful routine-steps (and ones to avoid!).

-PD