Don Kowalewski
Writer. Ad Sales and Marketing. Social Media Content Creator. Aeropress Coffee. Makes the best salsa in the world.
Things I Did: Slept
I probably shouldn’t jump the gun and claim I’ve conquered sleep, already. It’s only been 2 nights, but I might be onto something. Here’s what I’m doing…
Step 1: Planning a bedtime, sleep time, and a wake-up time that gives me 7.5 hours of sleep.
Step 2: 1-hour before my pre-determined bedtime, I stop looking at laptops, iPhone or iPad screens. I will watch mindless TV, however.
Step 3: I bought a sleep mask to create “total darkness” in my room.
Step 4: I make sure all devices are out of my bedroom and the only “glow” comes from the two bedside alarm clocks. But I think I’m going to remove mine because my Casio wrist-watch is sufficient to wake me up at my wake-up time.
Step 5: Drinking tea during my 1-hour pre-sleep ritual.
Step 6: Get into bed a minimum of 10-minutes before my pre-determined bedtime. Do some reading, meditating, praying, or close-up magic.
Step 7: Lights out. Sleep mask on. This happens at my pre-determined “sleep time” (which is different than “bed time” …yes, I’m a 4-year-old, again).
Step 8: When my alarm goes off in the morning at my pre-determined “wake-up” time, I’m getting outta bed without hitting the snooze bar and I immediately exercise for 30-minutes.
I have to say, friends …the first night, I awoke twice (not sure the times because I didn’t look at my clock) yet was able to get back to sleep. Last night, I woke up once, but got myself back to sleep. And yesterday and today, at work, I felt like a 25-year-old with boundless energy, clarity, focus, and an addiction to Instagram. Truth be told that Instagram addiction isn’t new because I felt younger …I love Instagram whether I’m a sleep-deprived 40-year-old who feels 50, or a well-rested 40-year-old who feels like he’s 25, again.
You were all waiting to hear this, right? Well, some of you could probably care less, but I’ve spoken directly with 12 dudes since my initial blog post, by phone and in person. Some offered advice. Some simply said, “when you figure it out, tell me.” Another guy (M.M.) said, “I thought that’s why they invented AMC or The History Channel …I drag myself down to the couch, flip on the TV, and sleep there.” Wise sage W.K. said he flips the TV on in his bedroom and sets the sleep timer while watching old sitcoms and that’s how he gets back to sleep. Then, there’s been at least another dozen dudes who’ve exchanged emails with me about this, or shared articles and links, so I know I’m not alone.
I share because I care. I share because, well, when I blog, it’s writing and I like writing and as weird as this sounds, when I don’t blog for a few days, I stay inside my own head mulling over idea after idea saying, “I should write that” or “that might make an interesting blog post.” Just explaining why I’m blogging about this and, essentially, airing out my oddities and problems, it helps. I wouldn’t blog about this, probably, except that when I initially emailed a few close friends, the response was overwhelming.
Turns out sleep deprivation might be a combination of turning 40, having a family you’re responsible for, dealing with and waking up to a little bit of your mortality, noticing you don’t have much in your savings account, and having to deal with the fact you (I) don’t have a vast fortune and sprawling estate like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, or that Facebook guy. But W.K. said something else (I mentioned him above) …he said to count my blessings, realize how much I do have, to practice completely clearing my mind, and to look at it this way …how many unproductive years and days and hours did I waste in my 20-something years? Same question regarding my 30-something years. And then do the math and think about all I didn’t do, yet all that I did do, and I was doing these things at a snail’s pace in my 20s and 30s as if I had a million vampire years ahead of me. Now, he pointed out, I can take this opportunity to find clarity and looking at the next decade, or two decades, if I vow to stop wasting time and focusing on the useless and pointless stuff I did in my 20s and 30s …just think how much you, me, and he can pack into 20 years.
Seriously. Think about it. But not if it keeps you awake at night. I used to play in 3 simultaneous Fantasy Football leagues. I played video games like it was my job. And all these years later …whether I had or hadn’t spent the time doing those things, I’d be right in this same spot. Now, think about if I had spent the hours I used drafting players and researching free agents to, oh, write a spec script for a sitcom and then figure out where to send something like that? Would I be happier? You bet your Emmit Smith for Michael Irvin trade deal, I would.
40 isn’t old.
Losing sleep is actually bad for you …this Mens’ Health article says too many sleepless nights can cause brain damage. Gulp!
Oh, and I’ve mixed in 30-minutes of exercise each day.
It’s been a good day. Lots of support. Lots of sleep (for two nights, anyway). And lots of time ahead of me.
And because I’m a hypocrite, I’ll still Tweet my random thoughts, cool articles, and links to things I’ve written, which is in stark contrast to W.K.’s advice. But, oh well …that’s the part of life I really, really like. I’m at @donkowalewski if you care to ‘Follow’ me.
Things I’m Doing: Sleeping (hopefully)
Here’s something that I picked up recently …a sleeping disorder. Not sure what brought it on. Might’ve been the mid-life crisis, might’ve been the 2 job changes in a year, might be the pressure of starting a new job and putting my entire mind, body, and soul into it. Or a bad mattress.
I’ll save you the gruesome details (which aren’t all that gruesome), but the problem was never falling asleep, but it was waking up and then trying to get back to sleep. I’d lay awake, some nights, for hours and sometimes for so long, it would be time to wake up and start the day. It wasn’t fun, and the more nights it happened, the more angry I was with myself for not being able to relax and get myself back to sleep.
Then something happened, I complained to a group of friends – all about my same age and in similar points in their career and life-cycle, raising kids, saving for college, and stuff like that. Turns out, it’s not uncommon. This never, ever happened in my 20s or 30s. But now, as I had begun my fifth decade, I was floating through my days on 5 hours or less of sleep.
In 2014, I resolve to figure this sleep thing out. It started last night with an earlier bed time, no computer screens or iPad or iPhone screens, and when it’s time to sleep …total darkness. I even bought a sleep mask.
Last night, it seemed to work. Except that the sleep mask was a little too tight (felt like it was pushing my eyeballs into my skull, which became another source of worry) and it’s electric-green, so my wife and daughter laughed at me when they thought I was sleeping. But I will say, I did fall quickly asleep, and the three times I woke up, I got back to sleep pretty quickly. And I made sure all laptops and devices were outta my bedroom, and I closed my door.
Total darkness!!!
And I don’t know if it’s real or a placebo effect, but I felt more alert today. And even though I missed the Golden Globes, which I selfishly wanted to watch, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.
Yay, me! Anyone else ever have trouble sleeping due to an inability to turn off their thinking brain? I’ve talked to at least 2o dudes my age who knew exactly what I was going through.
What are your tips? Tricks? Comment or Tweet at me @donkowalewski.
Things I’m Doing: Resolving
One of my resolutions this new year is to blog daily? Why? Ya know, I’m not really sure, but I know one thing …when I’m writing and creating, I’m happier. 2013 was supposed to be a great year for me. I was leaving a career of 16 years, and a company I’d been with for 10 years, to take a chance on a young company and it’s start-up, niche division, to build out its sales strategy, sales, and seek my fortune.
I didn’t make a fortune. I left that job. And I’m back in radio, selling advertising, and even managed to be hired back by the company I left. More on both those things in future blog posts.
The point is, 2013 started and I did all the things that self-help books, blogs, and sales gurus tell you to do. I wrote down goals. I created a vision. I showed up every day, with enthusiasm (for a while), and on and on.
It didn’t work. What happened? I guess I wouldn’t be the first person who tried something and it didn’t work, right? Heck, it wouldn’t even be the first thing I tried, personally, that didn’t work.
I’m committed to making 2014 better. But how?
One word: Resolve.
I’m going to have “resolve” instead of a long list of resolutions.
Sure, I have the standard list …get back into running, slowly, avoid snacks after dinner, write daily, show up early to work, read a book every month (I’m going to start with the complete works of Elmore Leonard), call one friend every day, floss daily, write letters, start my salsa business again, and …you get the drift.
But more than all of this, as Jeff Goins recommends, is have resolve. I’ve approached New Year Resolutions like I approach sales, I guess. I maybe thought if I make 100 resolutions and actually stick with 8 of them, well, hey …I changed my life in 8 ways, right? The problem would always be, then, that I’d think about the 92 failures.
Jeff says…
Here’s the bottom line: Without a stronger resolve, you have no hope of accomplishing your resolutions.
In other words, you need to commit. To choose into an intentional process that will make you better. Not a set of audacious goals you’ll never meet.
So that’s my number one, and maybe only, resolution …learn to have resolve. To define what that means and to apply it to my life. Like today …despite the fact I maybe don’t have “writing time” and I had a bad nights sleep and because I don’t feel like I have anything worthwhile to say or write about, I used that as a basis for this entry. And when I hit “Publish”, as trivial as it may seem, I’ll feel like I had a little of that “resolve” to start the day, I won’t be thinking about the “writing I didn’t do” and my guess is it will carry me through the rest of the day.
Follow me on Twitter at @donkowalewski.
Oh, and when I hear the word “resolve” I think of The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” and Sting pining …
“I resolved to call her up, a thousand times a day. And ask if she’ll marry me, in some old fashioned way.”
But, his “silent fears” stop him. Now that’s another blog topic for another day.
Things I Will Do: Have Faith
As I mentioned yesterday, this past weekend I decided to pick-up Scott Westerman‘s The Spartan Life 2 and read it again. But this time …really read it. And then blog about it. Why? It goes back to that old adage that you should think about a thing, then write it down, and then revisit it again and again. There’s some crazy high percentage that says people who write things down, their goals, dreams, etc …are much more likely to achieve those things.
Another favorite of mine is anything written by Roy Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads. His Monday Morning Memo “blog entry” (even though I think he shuns the idea of a ‘blog’) from this week mentioned “faith.” It’s like someone is trying to tell me something.
Have faith. Be faithful. Trust in faith.
This probably breaks some sort of blogging law, but I could’ve truly copied/pasted Roy Williams’s entire Monday Morning Memo, from yesterday.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Happy endings are made of it.
Faith is the evidence of things not seen. It is proof of the invisible.
Hope is optimistic expectation.
Faith is hope with its sleeves rolled up.
Faith is hope wearing working gloves.
Faith is hope yanking the ripcord of a chainsaw.
Faith is hope with a hammer in its hand.
Faith speaks of that which is not yet as though it already were.
Faith requires commitment.
Faith requires commitment and commitment is a choice. It’s not something that arises within you like courage. It’s not something that comes upon you like fear. Commitment is simply a choice.
Isn’t that beautiful?
That word …”faith” was also a main theme in the opening chapters of Scott’s book. And he was quick to point out, “faith” doesn’t necessarily mean religion, but he says “faith” is the most powerful version of belief – I’m paraphrasing him a bit, or maybe I’m telling you how I interpreted his words.
Belief in self. Belief in ones gifts. Belief in ones own voice. Belief, as Seth Godin often calls it, in ones “art” – that thing we do and we love doing it.
I had faith 2013 was going to be an adventure – and it was. Now, I have faith, with the lessons learned in 2013, I will make 2014 a great year. The best year of my life.
I’ll tweet about my best year, and I hope you’ll Tweet at me and mention me as you create your best year ever and I have faith that you will. Oh, I’m on Twitter at @donkowalewski.
Hit it, Mr. Joel!!!
Things I Do: Experiment with Writing Apps
In my never ending quest to find the prefect writing app for the iPad, my journey has led me to Textkraft. It q me of a word processor from the late ’80s or early ’90s. I recall two of my friends got word processors for graudation presents and I remember being a tad bit envious. These looked just like typewriters, but they showed one or two lines of text. Or maybe they showed about 20 words at a time. Anyway, it sounds ridiculous that you’d have to type into a small display and then read back your entire essay or paper in this little window, but when the alternative was typing an entire page and then messing up spelling or grammar on the very last sentence and, thereby making that entire page useless and needing to be retyped, this was a good thing.
Yes, there were computers at the time, but they cost ten times what a typewriter cost, and quadruple what a computer would cost – plus the printer. And those dot matrix things that printed on a spool and were prone to misreading …again. Word processors were awesome.
And, yes, I’m sure every single one of of my high school friends, by their sophomore year (1993 or 1994) had already ditched their word processors, but …what was my point? Oh, yes, this editor and interface reminds me of those word processors because Textkraft kinda has that simple feel.
Yet, when I was done typing this, it was easy to take this text and do something else with it. Blog it, send it to document. Hey, I could’ve sent it to Facebook.
I’ll use it for text only. I like it better than Pages, I think.
Things I Will Do: Balance My 2014
The worst thing about having a blog, which I’ve had now for about 10 years, is you can’t hide from anything you’ve said or boldly proclaimed. I’m lucky, for the most part, only about a dozen people read my blog, so it’s not like I’m letting too many people down.So Long, Shelf Elf, er, I mean, Elf on the Shelf.
I never thought I would be saying this, but I’m going to miss our little Elf on the Shelf. My whole life I’ve been a little fearful of elves, but turns out, they’re people, just like you and me. Except smaller. And magical. And mischievous by nature.
But, hey …I was born in the 70s and raised in the 80s …it’s just my generation. We don’t trust elves. In fact, I didn’t realize that when I was calling her “Shelf Elf” that I was actually being very insensitive. Getting to know an Elf on the Shelf made me realize “shelf Elf” is quite demeaning. They aren’t simply “elves” …there are many different types and origins – who knew?
Keebler Elves make cookies and live in trees. Elves on Shelves, well, they spy on kids and correct behavior. Santa’s Elves make toys. Then there’s Tolkien’s elves. It goes on and on. Oh, and just because I meet a creature that’s small and magical, I guess I need to realize sometimes it could be a Sprite or Fairy, and some Fairies look exactly like elves.
In 24 nights of hiding, only once did I have to run down after I went to bed and quick hide the elf.
Below is her farewell message, and before that, you can see she brought back a copy of Elf, starring Will Ferrell, back from the North Pole and had a little movie night with stuffed animals. So that answers the question …yes, Santa’s Elves and Elves on the Shelves like Will Ferrell and that movie. They do not, however, like Bob Newhart’s cold and non-joyous interpretation of elvin behavior.
We look forward to her visit next year.
Shelf Elf Stretch Run
You’d think it would be easy to blog a little more often with piping hot, fresh material every morning, but for Pete’s sake, it’s all I can do to keep hiding and posing the elf – blogging just adds another layer I can’t keep up with.
Here’s some recent places she’s hid. Or am I supposed to write “here’s some places she’s ‘hidden.”
Our Elf on the Shelf is a girl. So she grabbed a skirt while on her overnight adventure back to the North Pole. And then she played with some make-up, and I would yell at her, but for all I know, she’s old enough and her elf parents really gotta make that call.
The night before, Sugar Cookie, our Elf on the Shelf, got into a mini box of Fruit Loops.
Seriously, we were running out of funny ideas. Something.
Who’s Ready for More Shelf Elf
Well, last night was nearly a Elf on the Shelf disaster and it wasn’t until this morning while making coffee I was like, “oh, no …Elf on the Shelf didn’t move!”
It was a mad dash and desperate attempt to make things right, so I just threw him onto a counter top and wrote “yum” with M&Ms. Luckily, the previous two nights, as you’ll see below, were a little better. On Friday night, we hid candy canes and you can see Sugar Cookie (if I haven’t mentioned that’s our elf’s name) wrote a poem (using the King’s English) and then the night before that, he made “pancakes” in the kitchen play set. I put “pancakes” in quotes because I couldn’t find a pancake and what you see cooking up in the pan is actually the bottom of a fake hamburger bun. Interestingly enough, when my son found it, he said, “Sugar Cookie is cooking some kinda bread in a pan.”
Ten more days until Elf on the Shelf races back to the North Pole.
Holiday Lights
I had bigger plans for this year’s Kowalewski Christmas light display but I got lazy. I have about 1,000 lights still packed away.
Once again, the roofline is all retro bulbs, as is the wreath, and then the bushes have little white lights. If you pull down my street after sunset, it looks obnoxious. Not totally Griswold (the main character in Natuonal Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation), but closer than anyone else in the neighborhood.
Snow is great. It doesn’t matter to me that I had to shovel 3 times, today. I only wish I had one more chance to clear the entire driveway and keep building the quinzy pile. Currently, it stands 5 feet tall and has about a 10 foot diameter. Tomorrow? We build some tunnels.
Don Kowalewski 