I'm not sure I want to know the meaning of that dream

It's strange how the body reacts to changes. While I didn't expect to see too much change in just a few days, I did get change that I hadn't expected. Some of it is not so good, I've been waking up at 3-4 AM having trouble going back to sleep. I guess that'll go away once the body gets used to going to bed at 22:00, so it's more that I'm a bit disappointed that I'm not as awake and alert as I'd hoped for than a real issue. Some of it is strange, but highly amusing. I've been dreaming some of the strangest dreams in my life these last few nights. Last night I had a dream that started like one of those musical movies, Grease or something. I haven't seen any of those so I don't know which one it most closely resembled, but the beginning of my dream had something to do with learning to dance and group rivalry and stuff. After that it took some turn by huge sewer monsters (looking something like lobsters/scorpions, but with a sceleton, and about as big as a car) and ended up in a huge, ancient mythology style, end-of-the-world battle between good and evil. I don't remember everything about it, but among other things there was an interesting fox-like creature, just bigger and with a longer body than a fox. I do seem to remember dreaming it twice, perhaps with some difference the last time. Oh, there were the monkeys as well... Don't remember that part very well though, but perhaps that's a good thing or I wouldn't dare sleeping tonight ;-)

Change means work

Without being too dramatic I can't say my life is a tremendous success right now. I'm sure we all feel like this every now and then, but these last few months have been extreme. My apartment looks like a mess, my sleeping pattern is a Rorschach test, and it was months since I baked my own bread. Not all is wrong of course, but things can't continue like this and it takes some dedication to get out of all these bad habits. I've had "good intentions" to do so for months, if not years, but merely intentions haven't lead anywhere. The times I've actually tried to do something about it I've tried to change everything in one moment, and, of course, fell back into the old habits soon again.

Now I've found a way that I hope will get me some real results: to make the change One Rule A Day. I'll explain in more detail over the coming days, but in short I intend to take the areas I want to change and improve one small step each day. (To make this more likely to work and to have some buffer I only intend to introduce a new "rule" on weekdays, though the on-going rules will of course be true on weekends as well.) Some things will just get one day, and some will get more days. As an example I'll take my first goal of attack: my sleeping patterns. Since it's an important part, and crucial to the others it's what I'll start with, and I'll give it two weeks. I start this week with getting to bed in a good time and next week I'll move on to getting up. There might be other ways to do it, but this is what I have in mind: Today I'll go to bed at 24:00 hours (I'll have to add that I don't intend my goals to be too precise, I want to succeed and not waste energy worrying about minutes or seconds. If nothing else I'd have to call this first day a loss since it's already some minutes past 24:00.) and then I'll go to bed 30 minutes earlier until I get to my aim of 22:00 on Friday.

The reason I'm posting this blog is to get myself more motivated. To have others read about my process, my success and my failures, will help me going the days it feels like I'd better just give up.

Good night, and welcome back tomorrow for more info on my plans. As well as the scoop on whether or not I managed to resist the lures of the Internet and other temptations and got to bed. Plus you'll get the story on why baking my own bread is such a big issue...