I failed
Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay
For the past ten years, I have been practicing a musical instrument for 15 minutes per day. But in the past couple of days, I finally faced conditions too challenging to prevail. On the night between Wednesday and Thursday, both my boys decided to reenact Gary’s puking scene from Team America simultaneously. It was without a doubt the worst I have ever seen with regards to stomach sickness. And shortly after the boys had re-generated, it was my turn to do my own interpretation of the classic scene. As horrible as stomach sickness can be, I had a real eye-opening experience.
Wednesday night, I was on my way out to my drum kit to invest my daily 15 minutes. I was just going to check in on the boys to see whether everything was OK. It was not. It was so bad that I emptied the water boiler while cleaning one of them. When it was the next one in line, I had no hot water in the shower and we had to tap a bath and cook water in the kitchen. A proper challenge. Some teamwork with my wife and we sorted out the situation pretty good and quite fast. Just thinking about how tough this would have been had I been alone is not pretty. It is invaluable to be two parents. Obviously, this was not the time to tell your wife “Hey, I will go out for 15 minutes and play Bleed”. Not even I am that crazy… This is the first time I officially failed with my daily routine.
I took care of the cleaning duty while my wife prepared a “sickness safe” sleeping arrangement on the floor, in preparation for the inevitable upcoming aftershocks. Of which there were plenty. The first lesson is just a reminder, how quickly all your fancy plans can get thrown out of the window when reality strikes. We both had a serious vacation crescendo where there where 1000 things to do in the final days and we had both calculated and scheduled appropriately to finish by 17:00 on Friday. While writing this, she is now still working to catch up and I will get up early tomorrow and wrap up my last (delayed) deliveries. It is very important to get work things out of your system if you intend to go on vacation. I cannot really relax until I have ticked all my checkboxes on my pre-vacation checklist. Now, I just have two minor things, so it isn’t that bad, but still. Having that feeling of uncompleted homework loom over you, really dampens the mood and makes it difficult to engage battery charging mode on your soul. We shall sort that out tomorrow.
At least I did something right in the final week before vacation. I prioritized and executed. I did my most critical tasks first. And then, when the sickness struck, I only had minor actions that remained. That makes a huge difference on your mental well-being. Had I had something critical looming over me, it would have been impossible to relax. I have written about this problem before in relation to the 15-minute doctrine. My conclusion is that the optimal time to practice is as early as possible. Do the really important things first, because then the probability that they will be executed on a given day is considerably higher, than if you schedule your daily action later in the day. The last weeks I have been doing my drumming in the evenings, and that is just fine. Until something unforeseen happens. Next time I enter a stressful period for whatever reason, I now know how crucial it is to do the 15 minutes the first thing in the morning. There are no margins for error.
After my night shift watching over the sick little guys, I thought that we had made it. I felt great even though my severe exposure to the germs. But then on Saturday evening, I felt that something was strange in my stomach. I had eaten on McDonalds (which I rarely do) so I just thought it was my system that was in shock from all the sugar and fat. I had even drunk Coca-Cola so my sugar intake that day was perhaps 10X of a normal day. But I did what I usually do these times. I thought to myself, better get your ass to the drumkit right now in case you get sick too. I managed to hit my kit for about a minute (which counts as a practice session albeit short) before I had to drop the sticks and run in panic towards the nearest toilet.
Stomach sickness really floors you. It is like the world’s worst hangover but even worse. I arranged a bed on the sofa in my office, so I wouldn’t expose my wife to anymore germs than necessary and took necessary precautions to spend the night there, in solitude. I was so ill, that all I could do was look at the ceiling. I couldn’t even listen to an audiobook. My body just told me in the most honest way that it was time to initiate shut down sequence on all but life sustaining systems. I did not look at the clock, but I believe I did not fall asleep until around 4 or 5 in the morning. So about six hours of nothing but looking at the ceiling and focusing on the next breath. This is what I am grateful for. When was the last time you had a six-hour session of doing literally nothing? I for one, cannot remember. It felt a bit like an out of body experience. Maybe I was delirious and started hallucinating, but as I drifted away in loneliness without any external impressions, I started to “see” my thoughts. They lined up in neat rows on both sides of me, like books in a library isle. And the startling realization was that almost all of them were not mine. They were external, placed there by media I had consumed. That is scary. Like an awake nightmare, but it was simply the truth. I am convinced that it was my body and soul telling me to cut it some slack. I am constantly bombarding my mind with information. Reading and listening to interesting topics. But it is not healthy at all in the long run. The mind must have some rest from “the algorithm”.
Some people (me included) recommend dog walks without electronics for this specific purpose. My drumming is another daily habit where I am present. It could also be things like riding a motorcycle, playing with the kids, or engaging fully in a hobby. But the state of mind described above, is probably not attainable this way. These are activities of intense focus on something. Meditation on the other hand, is intense focus on nothing. I have never tried meditation, but my vision from my stomach sickness delirium could perhaps be described as involuntary meditation. And now, I clearly understand the value of it. The lesson to be learned here is that I should schedule time for doing absolutely nothing more often. It requires some planning, but it is probably worth it.
Oh, and regarding my missed drum practice session on Wednesday, I am not worried. I have put energy into my flywheel for a decade, so it will keep spinning. The habit is not a habit anymore, it is a ritual. It is not like you are going to stop brushing your teeth if you miss one night.