It’s 11pm at night and I have an urgent need to re-decorate my bedroom … by ‘re-decorate’ I mean shuffling the furniture around. My house is a mess, and there are many things more pressing to get to, but re-arranging my bedroom suddenly seems important. Maybe, it’s because I’m lying in bed, unable to sleep, knowing full well that if I don’t sleep any minute now I will be a very grumpy girl in the morning … yup, no doubt about it, the pressure to sleep is getting to me! By this point, basically all I am doing is lying there and stressing out about that fact that I am just lying there!

 

Falling asleep was going to be futile. So, I jump out of bed resolving to be productive. I have learned (through many therapy sessions – thank you very much) that the cure for stressing (or ‘being in your head’, as my therapist calls it) is action; apparently procrastination, however, is still an issue because although my sudden energy burst would have been quite useful had I tackled more pressing issues like dishes or laundry, I chose instead to do something much less constructive like re-arranging my bedroom. Clearly, I have my priorities straight.

 

1 hour later, I am a mess – I’m hot and sweaty, I feel gross, and look even worse (thankfully the only one being shocked by my appearance is me – oh, and my kitties, but they are much too polite to run in the opposite direction at the sight of me).

 

I’m tired (as in my body hurts from all the pushing, pulling, and coercing of furniture – who knew a box spring was so darn hard to maneuver?). I’m cranky – this is taking much longer than I thought! Worse yet, my room is in shambles and it now looks like I will be up half the night – either putting it all back the way it originally was or seeing the project through to completion. At this point, I am lamenting over having even gotten out of bed in the first place … lying there, albeit wide awake, now didn’t seem like such a bad thing compared to cleaning up the chaos that is now my bedroom. Why, oh why couldn’t I have just left things the way they were??

 

At some point (about ½ hour into my project, when I was still full of steam and motivated to create a much more ‘favorable location for everything’- according to the Feng Shui book I just read) … anyway, I had the brilliant idea of also cleaning out my nightstand and dresser drawers along with re-arranging them (if you’re gonna do something, do it right, right?).

 

Now, it’s midnight and I am spent. Suddenly, lying down and going to sleep appears very appealing to me. But, my bed is in the middle of the room, my treadmill is piled up on top of it (that’s where the ‘sweaty’ part of this endeavor ensued), my nightstand is just outside of my bedroom door, in the hallway, right along with my closet (it’s portable, on wheels) – all waiting for me to decide my bedroom’s ‘unique energy characteristics’ so that I can appropriately reposition them to fully maximize my ‘Qi’ (Feng Shui for ‘energy’). My armchair, for lack of somewhere else to temporarily put it, is still in the corner it initially occupied, but this time it is strewn with the contents from the drawers I’d just emptied: Clothes, books, writing pads, paper, pens, dictionaries, incense, and various other knick knacks are spilling over the chair on to the floor.

 

Looking around the room, I could feel my good old friend ‘stress’ join me. The very environment that I was trying to create free of stress, tension and conflict (according to my Feng Shui book) was in fact screaming with stress, tension and conflict! Rejuvenating, rebuilding my energy, and finding clarity is clearly not going to happen tonight since the present condition of my bedroom is anything but calming, uplifting and healing.

 

For a person who has to deliberate over every little decision, I’m always surprised at my sudden spurts of impulsivity – or, actually, I’m always surprised to find myself acting impulsively!

 

Sighing, I concede defeat. The time is just not right (yeah, that’s putting it mildly) for what I want to accomplish. By now it is 1am in the morning. If I go to sleep right away, I start calculating, I can still get about 5 hours of sleep. Never mind that I’m a minimum-9-hours-of-sleep-needed-to-get-through-a-day type of person. I’m already dreading just how tired (to put it mildly) I was going to be tomorrow.

 

No use wasting more time distressing about that now, I think, as I hop into action again. I slide my treadmill off the bed, and push the bed back to its original location. I don’t even bother with the furniture still out in the hallway and only retrieve my alarm clock from the nightstand. I make a mental note about the calisthenics I’ll need to perform tomorrow getting around that furniture.  I get into bed, glance at the clock and shudder at the time. If I am to fall asleep right away, I could still get 4 hours of sleep. Yikes! I switch off the light and try to calm my growing panic.

 

The kitties appear again (having previously run for cover early on in my must-move-furniture-around-now-mania) and settle themselves in for the night in their usual spots - Freddy, my oldest, snuggling into my neck and Zoe, my youngest, making herself comfortable on my feet. Good ol’ defeat also snuggles in close and wraps itself around me like a blanket.

 

‘What can I learn from this?’ I ask myself (my therapist would be so proud). Well, for starters, going to bed sweaty is not a pleasant experience at all! I do a quick calculation of the pro’s and con’s of getting up and quickly showering. Pro – I would be clean, which is always a good thing, and I wouldn’t have to shower in the morning, which would allow me a few extra minutes of sleep. Con – I might be too refreshed after showering, which means it would take longer for me to go to sleep, if at all. Perish the thought! Did I mention just how important sleep was to me (as in I need a minimum of 9 hours to get by)?

 

Okay, seriously, though, ‘What can I learn from – Oh, Freddy’s snoring! I love his snoring! It’s like my very own personal white noise maker … now, maybe I can get some sleep. I close my eyes and wait. I clear my mind of all thoughts and focus on his breathing. After awhile, I try matching my breathing with his … still nothing! My sweat has sufficiently done its job and I start shivering. I seek out Freddy’s warmth and bury my cold nose into his soft fur. Freddy starts purring in response. I smile into his fur, but am still no closer to falling asleep. I don’t dare look at the clock and mentally will myself to fall asleep.

 

Must (inhale) … sleep (exhale)… must (inhale)… sleep (exhale)… must (inhale)… sleep (exhale)… must (inhale) – hmm, I really should move that furniture from the hallway back in the bedroom. It’ll just take a few minutes and then I don’t have to worry about squeezing past it in the morning while I’m in a serious sleep-deprived state (I don’t even want to think about that).

 

I sit up and reach for the light switch. My cats open their eyes, squint right along with me, sit up, and look at each other and then at me. I can almost hear their thoughts, ‘Oh, no, here we go again.’

 

‘It’ll just take a few minutes, kitties,’ I say out loud to them (hmm, am I trying to convince them or myself?). On my way out of my bedroom, I spot some serious dust bunnies lounging around the footboards … definitely must sweep those up before moving my furniture back in. ‘If we are to be successful in life, we must start to address the environment where our ability to succeed is created’ pops into my head from my Feng Shui book. (Of course, it doesn’t say anything about addressing it at 4am, but that’s beside the point).

 

That done, I turn off the light and get back into bed. A few minutes later, I sit back up and switch the light back on … I seriously cannot sleep with my armchair left like that. So, I put on a pot of coffee, and tackle the mess wholeheartedly. By the time I am done, it is 5am and my room is spotless. It was a lot of work, but in the end I am very satisfied with my accomplishment.

 

The fact that the room is in the exact same condition it was before I started ‘re-decorating’ is beside the point. Oh, and so is the fact that I have not slept at all and now I have to shower and go to work. But, at least I’ll be able to come home to a clean bedroom, which means I can get some quality sleep right after work, which means I can then tackle my Qi problem in a more refreshed state. Sounds like a plan! My therapist was right (surprise, surprise). Action really is the key … well, that and sleep, but most people have the sleep thing down pat already.