No Wasted Moves

I spent a few minutes flicking back through my photo archives, both locally and on Flickr. Inevitably I was disappointed about how I had far less photos that I had thought.

It’s disappointing, because I try to take a lot of photos. Not of anything special or monumentous. I just want to take pics of what I see when I’m out and about. I try to take my camera with me as much as possible. I even bought an awesome little camera to take around with me so I couldn’t use the “don’t feel like schlepping around the dSLR” excuse. It’s true, I do take my G10 pretty much everywhere. But there’s a new and unexpected problem. Me. I’m going places, I’m taking my camera. I’m not taking photos.

It’s Resistance and it’s kicking my ass and it’s doing it because I’m letting it.

Enough.

Making pictures is something I need to do so it’s time I stop finding excuses and just do it.

Right now.

It’s hardly a secret that I have never been what you’d call a morning person. I always believed that it was genetic, a characteristic to be struggled with and accepted.

Sure, large doses of caffeine and large motivational factors (gotta catch a 6am flight!) could provide a short term burst of early morning activity, but it was begrudged and ever so fleeting.

My current work has posed an interesting challege in the early morning situation. I have to leave my place before 7am every morning. Ouch. To put that in context, 7am has always been my “first alarm” time. It’d be fair to expect another 30-45 minutes of alarm-snooze cycle on top of that. So this has been a struggle, compounded by the lack of drinkable coffee accessable from work – my usual crutch throughout the day. I’ve been struggling, but suddenly, I’m finding it not so bad.

I’m seeing the sunrise through eyes that arn’t bleary or cranky at the world for daring to demand my attention this early.

I’d never have thought it possible, but there it is. So then, how!?!

Incredibly (to me at least), it’s quite simple.

Firstly, lose the crutch. Quit caffeine. I’ve written about it previously. While my motivation wasn’t to make getting up easier (I actually expected it to make my mornings harder and more miserable, permenantly), that’s probably been the best outcome so far.  I can wake up, get up and not be in that foggy, caffeine craving but deprived state. That’s actually a pretty cool feeling. Not having the fog seems much better than being chemically extracted from it. Who knew.

As a side note, I still drink coffee. I guess you’d now call me a social coffee consumer. Usually 1 – 3 cups per week, as opposed to before lunch on any given day.

The second change has been a fair bit harder for me. Maybe not for everyone, but definitely for me.

Go to bed early enough to get the right amount of sleep for you.

I have no idea what that means for you, but for me it means getting in to bed by 10:30 to wake up a bit before 6. For someone who could count on one hand the number of pre-midnight bedtimes in the last 8 or 9 years, it took some getting used to. Cutting out the caffeine certainly helped because instead of feeling a bit tired and instinctively having an espresso so I could stay up a bit longer and do something (work, play or otherwise), I’d go to bed. Being tired actually meant getting ready for bed. There were a few other things to get used to though.

I had to make my bedtime independant. If it’s my bedtime, I go to bed. That means wrapping up whatever I am working on earlier.  Sometimes going to sleep while Ellen’s still up with lights on. Sending visitors home earlier than I used to. Whatever. The thing that isn’t going to change is the time I have to get up in the morning. So if I want to feel good in the moming, I have to actively make the call to go to sleep.

It’s been a challenge, but I think it’s worth it.

I broke my caffeine free streak a couple of days earlier than I expected. I had a day off and figured, what the hell.

In total I had 3 coffees for a total of 5 shots throughout the day. The last double shot latte was courtesy of Sam atYala, and it was awesome as always. What was different though, was my reaction to the caffeine.

My last coffee was at around 4pm. By 5pm I had a headache building up – I figured food would help and it did a little. Berocca & Ibuprofen eventually dealt with it later in the night.

Only problem was, I could not sleep. Went to bed before 11 knowing I was waking up a bit before 6am. And then I just lay in bed wide awake. Midnight, 1am, 2am came and went. Got up, had a glass of water. Pretended something interesting was happening on the Internet. Went back to bed. Still awake. I eventually drifted off around 3.30 to be woken up  2 1/2 hours later by my alarms going off. Ouch.

So, it seems like going cold turkey for 2 weeks was enough to reset my caffeine sensitivity back to more normal levels – sort of. I didn’t get the immediate kick that I was used to, but damn, my brain just wouldn’t turn off.Used to be that a double shot espresso would provide a nice little buzz, but I could have one at 10pm and head to bed 2 hours later and sleep more or less just fine.

The end result is now that I’m feeling a bit wary of having much coffee/caffeine at all. Maybe it’ll be down to 1 or more often none per day.

Turns out I’m fully functional without it, and honestly, I’m happier that way.

Seven days in to my caffeine free period of life (yes, it’s a period, not permenant) and I think I’ve gotten past most of the feeling like rubbish stages. At the very least, I’ve been able to function at work without feeling like the living dead, and actually written some decent code and solved some problems. All without caffeine. Amazing!
Some observations, in no particular order:

Detoxing is sneaky

When you’re used to operating with a lot of caffeine in your system, you know when it’s time for a top up. Hrm, feeling snoozy. Coffee. Fuzzy, coffee. Needing a moment of clarity, RedBull. When you’re getting used to not having that, the downward slides can be sneakier. I’ve been careful about getting plenty of sleep, but the effects are outworking in other ways. I’ll feel grumpier. Or unsettled. Headachy. Whatever it the problem, they sneak up on me, starting out fairly mild going from there. It just makes everything harder. I’ve found there to be three go to options (as opposed to one previously, have a coffee…).

1. Go to bed. Obviously I can’t do this at 11am, but a lot of the time it’s happened after 8pm, so just getting ready for bed has definitely helped. The extra sleep certainly helps.
2. Berocca.  This stuff is awesome. It’s a big cup of fizzy-make-better without the inevitable sugar/caffeine crash. Not sure what an excessive dose would be. I’m doing 1-2 per day.
3. Walking & exercise. Moving around seems to help feel less crap. I’m sure if you looked you’d find someone authoritative saying that exercising releases endorphins. I’m sure it does. For me, lifting heavy things or going for a walk to the shops puts me in a better mood, and if I was feeling tired before, I’ll still be tired, but satisfyingly tired. I lifted heavy stuff. I deserve sleep.

Coffee isn’t just a drink. It’s a social object.

Chemical stimulation aside, I’ve missed the social aspect of coffee. It’s not just something I drink. Coffee is something I do. With other people. I’ve found I’ve skipped oppportunities where I would have gone out for coffee with folks, instead opting to stay in. Bummer. Sure, there are other drinks which would substitute. But at the moment, coffee is still a major social motivator for me.

As an aside, I really miss Starbucks in this town. For me, they had the social factors figured out. Can’t think of anywhere else around here that fills that gap.

On the whole I’m really quite happy with how it’s all going. In a couple of weeks I plan to have coffee again, but only for social purposes, not as a productivity crutch.

This week, for the third time in my life, I’ve quit caffeine. For plenty of people, this wouldn’t be a big deal. For me, it is. And it’s that very fact that it is a big deal which is prompting me to quit.

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