Insomnia

Sunday May 11th

Oh my, I am tired. My sleep is off. I have been making myself wake up earlier this week and I have definitely not adjusted. At night, even though I am sleepy I just toss and turn. Most days don’t fall asleep any earlier than I usually do. So when my numerous alarms go off starting at 6:30 I am pretty dang tired.

I keep my phone outside of my room so that when the alarms go off it forces me to get up and walk into the living room to turn it off. That usually keeps me from falling back asleep but not today! I woke up, grabbed my phone, thought to myself I am for sure falling back asleep and you bet I did. I kept dozing off and turning my alarms off until around 9 am. Yikes…That has caused me to feel super duper groggy and out of it today yay.

Luckily I don’t have obligations away from my house today. I can get things done on my own time and be relatively chill today.

Art Class

The art class I taught yesterday was really fun. It was kind of a slow start as my energy was calm. Since I knew 3 of the 4 ladies taking it (2 of whom took a class from me previously) I wasn’t stressed for it. It is honestly the most perfect way for me to start teaching. I hate being in front of people and speaking so I have a long way to go to build more confidence.

Distracting

One thing I wasn’t anticipating, is me being so distracted by side conversations and multiple people talking to me and asking questions all at once. I honestly love the challenge of that and for this class (only my second one) I made a point to focus on each individual person and making sure they were happy with their painting and suggesting different things to help them like what they made.

The thing I am going to work on the most is at the very beginning of the class, being more organized with how I explain getting started and why each step and ingredient is important. Even after the first class I noticed that not everyone heard everything I said, and I know that’s partially on the student but I don’t want anyone to miss anything. I am going to write an outline and print it out really big and place it somewhere everyone can see it. So that when they are mixing up more paints they can look at that outline to guide and remind them of every little step.

Art Fest

I have an Art Market I have a booth at next Saturday, yikes. Yikes because I have a lot to prepare for! It’ll be my first outdoor market and only second market ever. It is right across the street from where I teach painting and it’s in a historic art district but it’s a small part of town with not a ton going on – relatively speaking. I assumed it’d be really small and not too intimidating to look perfectly professional.

There will be 30 vendors which was surprising and more than I was expecting! It is exciting though I am thrilled to meet other artists and musicians.That’s a huge reason I decided (last year) I’d start doing Markets is the networking part. I don’t know a lot of creatives and I always love meeting like minded friends.

My Dog

I will have my dog, Luna with me as she is the “Social Outreach Manager” for my business lol! She is extremely extroverted and social and I tend to be the opposite. She hates warm weather so I need to make sure she stays cool. It is only 5 hours long which is good, any longer than that would be possibly too long for her if it’s a hot day. Now that I am writing this out I realized that it is earlier in the day which will mean a lot cooler than the hot afternoons and evenings here in the Denver Metro area. I am going to buy a nice cooler and fill it with ice for her and figure out some other ways to keep her cool. I’ll have a tent/canopy thing for some shade and I’ll probably set up an umbrella just for her as well.

Oh my gosh I should make her a name tag saying “social outreach manager”.

Eating Junk After Stress

Something I noticed is I tend to want to eat junk after doing a hard or stressful thing. It’s probably a way to soothe and get back down to baseline after a period of heightened activity/stress. Even if it’s good stress. These days I do eat pretty dang healthy but I have been trying to notice true hunger versus emotional hunger. Also, a lot of times when I have a headache (which is damn near most days) I want to constantly munch on something as well. I think it’s because maybe if I find the right food then the headache will go away and also it’s a distraction from the pain.

I’m working on listening to my body’s true hunger and fullness signals. This is something I have not been doing for longer than I’d like to admit. It’s too easy to forget this basic thing and eat because of what time it is, habit, emotions, headaches etc. So much of what I’ve learned psychologically and physiologically always comes down to, “the answer is inside you”. The answers tend to be inside the pain, inside the body. Any time of pain or discomfort causes us to want to get rid of it, avoid, avoid, avoid. But when we soften, allow, and feel into pain, it becomes more tolerable and becomes our teacher.

To learn more about your relationship to your pain, click here.

Here’s a website explaining Neuroplasticity.