3 min read

Notes on moving my phone charger so it's not next to my bed any more

Today is the 7th of January, 2025, and yesterday evening I moved my phone charger so that my phone can charge overnight on the other side of the room. Some people would say that it is too early to give an update on how this is going, but I am not some people.

Effects I have noticed, so far:

  • My bedside lamp is in a dumb place - I need to dig out a longer extension cord so it can go back to the taller bedside table rather than the stool I have on the other side of the bed. That's okay, though.
  • I forgot to take my pills before bed last night. I guess I was riled up from all the excitement of dealing with plug sockets (I'm normally alright at remembering... I forget let's say once a fortnight on average. Not great but not the worst)
  • Last night, I read before bed! A reasonable amount and then I fell asleep with the book still open. I generally don't let myself read before bed because either it'll be a book that compels me and then I'll stay up too late to finish it. Or it'll be a book that doesn't compel me and in that case I'll stop reading it after a few stabs at it. I lack persistence in these things and an easy relationship to doing things habitually.
  • But this book was fine to read before bed, because it is a 1957 book on the chemical composition of clay. A subject I find fascinating, but learning that clay is typically primarily composed of fine crystals of feldspar does not have me hooked to find out what happens next.
  • I'm now considering making a special pile of bedside books, where every book has been prefiltered for being a little bit too much effort for me to be keen to read it.
  • I then woke up earlier than usual, and had a nice reflective hour or so as the sun rises compiling my intentions for the year. I don't know if I can ascribe this to the phone thing, but it was nice.
  • What I have really been hoping for did happen, although it is again too early to credit this change - I woke up, I acknowledged that I was awake, and then I got out of bed. I did not check what was happening in the world and what messages I'd received for approximately one hour longer than I would have intended to.
  • I was thinking about this reflective time, and how I wanted to maybe use some of this time around bedtime not on a device, so I moved a couple of spare notebooks down to sit beside my bed.
  • And going to bed this evening, I find myself in bed at 11PM, a whole hour earlier than I usually am! Incredible! And I'm looking forward to learning about how different types of clay differ in crystal formation.
  • The punchline is, of course, that I am currently writing these words on my laptop. Probably it isn't a positive step that, in the absence of little computer, I find myself on the big computer instead. On the other hand, I am using it as a typing-words device, not a checking-up-on-the-world device. But I do understand how a slippery slope feels underfoot.

But still, it seems like a good change, we'll see how it goes over the longer term. Arguably worth it even if it only gives me a week of vague benefit, it was not a lot of work to do. I struggle with setting habits, with valuing """self-care""", with sitting with myself. So it's better, where I can, to shift the way my environment works instead. Forcing functions & ways to lower activation energy for things I want to happen.

One example of this is that I have always been bad at opening and closing my curtains at the correct time of day. I know I'll just have to do it all over again, and besides, once I'm up I'm up. And before I am... well, it's dark, do I really need to get up. So now I own my place, I bought some expensive and complicated "smart blinds", the selling point of which is supposed to be that I can operate them from my phone, but the real point of which is that they go up at 8AM and go down some time after it gets dark. I wake up so much more reliably now that the sun shines across my face at the right time of day. (There is a downside, however).

Anyway, time for bed actually going to sleep. Thank you to Holly for inspiring this positive life change. And to that particular mood that comes over a person at the very start of the year. Here's to good intentions!