Day One. No Sleep for the wicked

Well, day one has been designed to approach one of my favourite things to do on this earth - sleep.

I am a terrible night owl, a habit nurtured since senior high school years and compounded at university - but this has not always been the case. In the days of pre-teen wonder, i would irritate my family by waking up at 5am every day. I would be dressed, ready for school and would have jogged around my house before anyone even got up and then was cursed to wait until my siblings were ready to finally be late for school. By the time I became a scrappy
teenager, i had fallen into the fold.

Well, it has taken 10 years to cultivate a ridiculous pattern of sleep, and i plan to change it in only 10 days and this is how:

1. No caffeine after 2pm. Caffeine will eventually disappear entirely, but for now it is a welcome morning friend that will be substituted by banga tea (an oddly delicious almost flavourless but heavy scented tea) from 2pm onwards.
2. All electronic equipment is to be turned off at 2100hrs
3. My new book - "econometrics in practice" should entice an immediate and effective drowsiness with every page indulged (as it did at university) and is safely on my bedside table
4. No gym activity is to be undertaken after 1900hrs
5. I am to sleep in my bedroom as opposed to on my lounge.
6. I am to eat at 1930hrs - no later
7. My mobile phone is to switched off at 2030hrs

I have been in the fortunate position to study my natural sleeping pattern and have kept a log of the hours I have woken and when I have slept. My average sleeping pattern (without alarms or pharmaceuticals) is 345hrs to 1100hrs - that's is 7 hours and 15 minutes. Disappointed that I do not share my required sleep with some of the greatest statesmen and intellects of the 20th century (4hrs on average), I will need to establish a plain old John sleeping pattern that involves a goal to rouse naturally at 600hrs. This means I will need to be in bed by 2245hrs - no
later, so I have set my new, disciplined bed time at 2230hrs. *Gulp*

Of course, having spoken with my doctor, I have been prescribed stilnox and diazapem to aid in the sudden shock I am about to provide my possum inspired circadian rhythm, so with a bit of luck I will become one of those morning people who will scoff at the shock come daylight savings!

Project's Eve

Well, firstly I am a lazy, hard partying 28 year old looking out across the bleak world of hideous finance and wondering how the hell I got here. Sure I am successful at work, stupidly overpaid and uninspired. I lack discipline, am complacent, cocky and horrified by my own affluenza, poignantly manifesting itself in increasingly reckless hedonism.

This makes me unhappy and unfulfilled and horrified at what the future holds.

Add to this the monotonous cycle of dreariness that has poisoned my passions in the form of a hated vocation and the daily observation of the long term effect of this toxic environment on my colleagues and mentors and the idea of dropping the ball completely is sometimes overwhelming. I find myself increasingly aware of deplorable attitudes manifesting within me through exposure to this environment - the sheer sordidness of it all is suffocating. I don't like what I am becoming, let alone what i will almost certainly be if I continue on my current path.

This is not a path I am prepared to accept nor continue following. And I don't see why I cannot change it. Every last ridiculous piece of it

And I will.

My blog is going to track my progress as I prepare for an incredible change. It will be an outlet for my petty frustrations, a log of my achievements and failures, and serve as an integral part of a new, structured and spartan me. I am utilising a number of techniques having already read several books and journals to aid in the transformation and I am willing to try them all. If you happen to read any of this (hello!) - I hope the techniques I find to be successful and helpful will recommend themselves to you.

My personal motto has always been that "No one is human innocently", and whilst it has excused my reckless acts, I plan to harness it to inspire patience within me on this journey and develop that into a much happier, healthier, and disciplined me.

Wish me luck!