37 days.
Work is a nightmare right now, 12-15 hour days, on like 20+ days consecutively working. I only mention that because I'm dead tired and over the last couple of days my sleep has been pretty meh from the stress, and I have been waking up more in the night.
Historically, being exhausted has been somewhat of a trigger for me, and I would say 75%+ of the time when I have slipped after a good streak it's been waking up in the middle of the night, and either just using PMO almost before my half-asleep brain can catch up or after laying in bed unable to fall back asleep for a long time and finally giving in to the idea that I need PMO to relax my brain to fall asleep.
So far I feel fine. I haven't had any issues the last couple of days. I mention this mostly to get myself mentally prepared for those scenarios if they do come. So here's what I need in my mind.
1. PMO does nothing for me. This nothing includes the fact that 9 times out of 10 using PMO doesn't even help me go back to sleep. I typically lay in bed awake for a long time after PMO still. It just deadens my anxiety about the lack of sleep a little. But deadening the anxiety a little doesn't fundamentally change the fact that I am not getting sleep. If I actually want to fall back asleep I should do some mindfulness or just accept that I am awake and read.
2. I am lucky to have some flex in my morning schedule because most of my team is an hour earlier than me and I start when they start, so I can just, for a couple of days skip a couple things typically I do before work such as my workout or my singing practice or my goof of on guitar time. That allows me the option to sleep a bit later than I usually do and still start work on time. I only have 4 more days of work hell to go, it's not going to break any of my goals to pause some of these things fo 4 days.
3. If I really am feeling overwhelmed by an urge, it's ok to take extreme measures. I can walk out in the freezing cold at 2 am or whenever it is and get away from my devices. Freezing cold typically brings my executive function back on board.
4. I can remember that I stopped using PMO 37 days ago, and there's no reason to start again.
Never going back to PMO.
