Week 04/2025: And so, to sleep

Week of 20 January 2025

Part of week 4 is in this post about me continuing to come to terms with Kramstable getting ready to leave home. It’s getting closer and closer, but there are other things going on as well.

This is the rest of the week.

A sleep routine

I recently got some tips from a course by sleep physiologist (yes, this is apparently a thing) Stephanie Romiszewski.

I’ve written a lot about trying to get back into a sleep routine and trying to get more sleep. So it’s no wonder ads kept popping up all over the place urging me to do the course. The internet is stalking me.

In June 2024 I wrote about how sleep is my priority in perimenopause, and I found a few tips here and here, including going outside early in the morning to get light exposure, shutting down screens an hour before bed, and having a regular bedtime.

These were all things I thought I knew about for a sleep routine.

However, Stephanie says up front that in this course you need to be willing to change your habits and change your mind about sleep.

Well cool, I can do that.

She says get rid of all sleep hacks, sleep trackers, sleep aids . . .

Was not expecting that!

Her reasoning is, among other things, your body knows how to sleep, and sleep existed before hacks and devices did, so you don’t need them in order to sleep.

(You can feel me wanting to argue, right? BUT I CAN’T SLEEP, STEPHANIE! I need the hacks!)

However, she insists. She says if you don’t put the basics of good sleep in place, none of the other sleep hacks like supplements or having a certain temperature in your bedroom, are likely to work for you. They might make incremental improvements to your sleep once you are in a good sleep routine but they won’t compensate for bad sleep habits.

Okay, that makes sense.

So what are the basics?

You might think that going to bed at the same time every night, like I’ve been doing is a reasonable thing to do if you want to regulate your sleep. However, Stephanie disagrees. She says what you do in the morning is more important than your bed time.  Therefore, getting up at the same time each day is actually more effective in establishing a sleep rhythm than going to bed at a fixed time. You should, she says, go to bed when you’re sleepy tired. Going to bed because it’s ‘bed time’ and lying awake because you aren’t tired will just make you anxious and worried about not sleeping, and make it even harder get to sleep.

This also makes sense.

What should eventually happen is getting up at the same time every day (and getting as much light as possible—natural is good but artificial is better than none) should start to make you sleepy at around the same time each night, and that’s when you head off to bed.

A pink pre-sunrise sky over the river. The pink sky is reflected in the water
And if you get up and go outside first thing, you get to see beautiful sunrises like this

But you need to go to bed when you’re tired, not do any pre-bedtime routine at that point.

You should have already done that routine at your regular shutdown time: get ready for bed and do relaxing activities. These should be things you wouldn’t do during the day. This will help your body associate those activities with getting ready to go to sleep. Then when you get really sleepy tired, all you have to do is go to the bedroom, get into bed and (the story goes) fall asleep.

These ideas aren’t miles away from what I’ve been trying to do in my own sleep routine, so it’s really tweaks rather than a complete overhaul. Getting up at the same time every day and getting into the light as early as possible, then adjusting my evening routine a bit.

Stephanie suggests trying her plan out for two weeks to see if it makes a difference. This includes the regular get-up time, exposure to light and moving in the morning, winding down at night, only going to bed when you’re sleepy, and if you can’t sleep, get up and do one of those evening wind-down activities. Not work. Not anything that makes you think.

And so, to sleep . . .

The main thing that’s been holding me up from trying this finding relaxing, non-engaging activities to do before bed because everything I do in the evening is on a screen.

Here are some ideas I’m trying

  • Shower and put on pyjamas
  • Lie in semi-supine
  • Guided meditation
  • Read fiction
  • Do light stretches
  • Drink herbal tea (not such great idea if it causes me to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom)
  • Muscle relaxation/body scan
  • Listen to a specific play list

Stephanie says the goal is not to have ‘perfect sleep’ because this is impossible, and everyone will have a bad night’s sleep every now and then. However, the more we worry about sleep and pursue perfection, the more anxious and worried we get, and the worse our sleep becomes. (Also, quite obviously, if you have an actual serious sleep disorder such as chronic insomnia or sleep apnoea, you need professional help.)

Summary of the week

Habit tracker

  • Go outside & exercise first thing (7 days): 7/7
  • 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 6/7
  • Hip exercises (5 days): 5/5
  • 2 walks or bike rides or a combination (6 days): 6/6
  • Long walk (1 day): 0/1
  • Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
  • 9.00 shutdown (7 days): 4/7
  • Evening routine (7 days): 7/7

What did I learn this week?

From Merriam Webster:

‘Nickname’ is not ‘nick’ + ‘name’.

It was originally ‘ekename’. ‘Eke’ was the Middle English word for ‘also’ or ‘in addition’. Since ‘ekename’ began with a vowel, people used ‘an’ before it.

Over time, ‘an ekename’ became ‘a nickname’.

What did I notice this week?

Dolphins in the river on Sunday morning.

I went out with the idea of making some long exposure photos of the river at sunrise. In previous walks I had either taken the wrong lens for the ND filter, or forgotten to check I had the tripod plate. Today I had both of those things but I’d forgotten to charge my battery . . .

I was standing on a rock trying to make the most of what I had to make photos, when I saw some black shapes in the river.

A pale orange sky above blue water. There are very tiny dolphin fins a long way away
Fleeting glimpse of dolphins in timtumili minanya/River Derwent

It took me a bit of looking to see what they were, and it was so cool to see them.

What was the best thing this week?

The dolphins.

What am I listening to this week?

Kramstable and I went to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s ‘change the date’ rally on Sunday (26 January).

An orange/yellow stylised map of Australia with the words "NOT A DATE TO CELEBRATE" in black text. The background is a black horizontal band and a red horizontal band
Not a date to celebrate (source: Clothing the Gaps)

I think it’s important to support the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community on this campaign, along with their broader calls for land back, truth telling and treaty.

The rally started with a storytelling circle. Members of the community told us about some of the horrific massacres that took place in the early days of colonisation in lutruwita/Tasmania.

A dark skinned man with a beard holding a microphone. He is dressed in an anumal skin over a brown shirt, his face and body are painted. He is holding two clapsticks in his other hand
One of the storytellers at the rally

These are terrible stories, which we need to hear.  We need to know the truth about what the British colonisers did to the people who lived here and how this has played through to the experiences of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, palawa and pakana, today.

I can’t understand why, having heard these stories, anyone would be okay with celebrating this day.

It is not okay.

What am I watching this week?

Twelfth Night at the Botanical Gardens. It was magical.

A poster for a performance of the play Twelfth Night. There is a mask lying on sand underneath a white arch
The Twelfth Night poster

Also the performance Feral at “a secret CBD location”.

This was a collaboration between Singaporean puppetry company, The Finger Players and queer theatre makers, Gold Satino, who are based in Naarm/Melbourne and nipaluna/Hobart. They makes site-specific theatre, which is such a fascinating concept. As I understand this, it means the show is designed around the site it will be performed in.

An abstract artwork in purple and green with the word FERAL in white capital letters at the top left
The program for Feral

Feral was cool.

What am I reading this week?

I’m not reading anything. So much for that habit! It might have to become one of my pre-bedtime activities.

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