TMM – Week 2 (Pt. 1)

Sunday:
Today’s the first day of week 2 in my MM ~adventure~. Yes, it’s an ADVENTURE dammit. So, waking up and staying up this morning felt pretty easy — I think I fell asleep around 9 or 10 last night, so that’s probably why.

There’s only about one month left in the semester — hard to believe that we’re already this far. My first PhD program application deadline is in 2 weeks (December 1st). I’ll be graduating from the masters program, and commencement is on the 18th. At 9 in the morning. Which sounds really early, but I guess it shouldn’t be a problem for me if I keep up this MM routine. I’m only applying to 3 schools this cycle; my adviser suggested I apply only to my top choices this year. I’m not quite sure which is my top school out of the 3 though — at the moment, I’d be happy going to any of them. Fingers crossed I get interviews for all of them.

The schools I’m applying to are in Colorado, Arizona, and Florida. They all do developmental cognitive neuroscience-type research focusing around executive functions. The lab in Florida was recommended to me by the PI whose lab I worked in during my first semester of the masters program. I like the climate and all the outdoor activities in Colorado. Arizona has really good research labs in aging, but that doesn’t apply as much to me since the lab I’m applying to is involved in development, not aging in adults.

Monday:
The other day, I tried the first video in this 30 Days of Yoga playlist on Youtube, and I noticed that after getting a little over halfway through it, I felt the most awake out of any other time I’ve done the MM routine. So I decided to get myself a yoga mat yesterday and try the 30 Days of Yoga challenge starting today.

It seems kinda odd that a practice that is focused on relaxing and quieting your mind can make you feel the most alert and aware of things. I also found out today that I’m pretty inflexible. Sad days. It also feels slightly redundant to have a meditation session during the MM routine, and then do yoga during the exercise portion of the routine. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever went through all the parts of the MM.

So, the author/creator of the MM came up with this acronym: Life S.A.V.E.R.S.
S = Silence (meditation)
A = Affirmation
V = Visualization
E = Exercise
R = Reading
S = Scribing (writing/journaling, etc.)

You don’t need to do everything in that order, but that’s the order that makes the most sense acronym-wise. Now it just makes me want life savers candy.

Tuesday:
I had the pleasure of being woken up at 4 something this morning by the lovely sounds of tornado warning sirens. All I did was lie in bed and waited for it to stop. In hindsight, I probably should have taken shelter in the closet or something, but I’ve heard that sound so infrequently in my life — and without any significant repercussions — that I guess I just don’t take it very seriously. I’m sure if I lived in Oklahoma, it would be a very different story. At some point, I thought I heard ambulance sirens, but maybe that was just overlapping sound from another siren. I don’t know, I was half asleep and groggy and irritated that it was going on for so long. I think the only coherent thought was something akin to “Oh, it must be a tornado siren. I wonder if I’ll have to call the lab and tell them I won’t be coming in due to the tornado warning.”

I was having a pretty interesting dream too — something about a girl doing an acrobatic performance on a hoop hanging from the ceiling for her bat mitzvah. Yeah, I don’t know either; I’ve never even been to a bar or bat mitzvah. I’m guessing that part of the dream was based off one of the Community episodes I had watched last night.

Hopefully the rest of today is pretty tame compared to my initial wake-up call.

Wednesday:
I don’t really have anything in particular to talk about today that you haven’t already heard within the last week and a half. Just the usual stress about crunch time for both PhD applications and also coming to the end of the semester. Same old, same old. So this time, I’m going to pull from a list of questions that I saved for blog post ideas.

What do you regularly do before bed?
I don’t really have a set bedtime routine that I go through. Immediately before I climb into bed, I plug my phone into the charger on the bar counter, and place my glasses on the end of the bar counter closest to the bedroom. Those two are things I started doing at the beginning of the MM 30-day challenge.

Seems like lately, I eat and watch Community, or I play some games on my 3DS. The most recent ones are Persona Q and Fire Emblem Awakening (replay). If I haven’t fed the dogs already, I do that before I go to bed. And of course, watching TV and playing video games aren’t exactly recommended right before going to bed. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re discouraged, since the bright light can make your brain more alert (in addition to the mental stimulation you’re giving it from the TV show/game). I haven’t really had any trouble falling asleep recently, though that’s probably more due to the possibility that I’m sleep deprived. At the very least, I feel tired when I go to bed. Let’s leave it at that.