Early to Bed: The Kindness Challenge–Week One

I found this lovely challenge sponsored by the blog The Richness of a Simple Life.
The challenge lasts for seven weeks and the first week, which just ended, the challenge was to do something kind for yourself.  There were several suggestions, very nice ones.  Heres a link to the post. I thought about using one or creating my own–something like drawing every day, which I’ve been wanting to do.    But then I asked myself: What would be a kindness to myself that would really make a difference in my life?
I decided to go to bed when I was tired.  It sounds pretty silly to me that I need to challenge myself to do that, but apparently I do.  After all, my kids are grown up and so it’s not like it was when they were little and sometimes outlasted me in the evening.  When I’m teaching, I often have a lot of stuff to do to get ready for the next day in the evening. I often push myself beyond my limit to get stuff done.  But the funny thing is that even this year, when I’m setting my own schedule, I’ve been pushing myself to stay up late and get a few more things done.  I figured that now was a good time to stop doing that as any.
So I did, and it’s been great.
I discovered something else, too.  I saw my doctor last week.  We’d been talking about tweaking my diet because I still haven’t been feeling great and I still felt like it was related at least in part to what I’ve been eating.  I haven’t eaten gluten (probably have celiac) or dairy (except butter) and a bunch of other stuff for a few years now.  I’ve felt much better since then.  But I’ve been becoming sensitive to more and more stuff.  I came across a description of histamine intolerance and a list of common foods that trigger symptoms.  A lot of stuff on there I knew I couldn’t tolerate and some others I suspected were causing problems.  So when I talked to my Doc about it, we decided I would try a low-histamine diet.  So I started on Wednesday,  the same day I decided to go to bed when I’m tired.  And I slept more and better than I have for a while.  I even woke up feeling rested a couple of days ago.
Yesterday, I went to the farmer’s market and bought lots of beautiful vegetables.  The farmer’s market is one of those things that makes me unreasonably happy.  I roasted some asparagus, beets and purple potatoes–all allowed on my new diet.  And I had some frozen locally caught rainbow trout.  For low-histamine, you can only eat fish if it is cleaned and either cooked or frozen within 30 minutes after being caught.  I didn’t know if this had been or not.  But now I’m guessing not because I felt it within a few minutes.  My breathing tightened and I felt weak and foggy (all pretty common feelings for me in the last few years, so not too upsetting but still unpleasant).  Later I was pretty itchy.  And even later I had a hard time falling asleep and so ended up staying up late.
So I learned some things.  First, it looks like there might be something to this histamine intolerance for me.  Second, maybe I was staying up late partly because of my food issues.  Third, it’s a good idea to be kind to myself.  I think about how I treat the children in my classes, trying to understand what is behind a challenging behavior, knowing that they are doing the best they can.  But I’m a lot rougher on myself, beating myself up for not going to bed early enough and various other things.
Anyhow, I’m going to keep trying with both eating a low histamine diet and going to bed when I’m tired and see what happens.
Both of them seem like good ways of being kind to myself.
And I’m going to be much kinder to myself.
Which seems like a good basis for being kind to others.
Thanks for stopping by.