My Self-Care Routine is Life-Changing... and Boring
Read Time: 5 Minutes
Words by Alyssa Nutile
Self-care is a popular topic these days. Self-care this. Self-care that. Extravagant vacations are self-care. Luxurious baths are self-care. Buying moderately expensive gourmet ice cream to eat in a blanket cocoon on your couch is self-care.
That’s all great, and we should all keep doing that on occasion. I’m the last person on earth who is going to tell you to stop. But I’ve also discovered a much more impactful version of self-care in this last year. It’s not very social media friendly, and honestly, it’s not very exciting either. But it is sustainable. It’s consistent. It’s easy to fit in my everyday life, because it’s a facet of my everyday life. It has made me less dependent on those bigger (and rarer) self-care moments by teaching me to appreciate the joy in little moments and habits that I carve out for myself every day.
It all started with a walk. A walk everyday since the very first day of the Covid-19 pandemic back in the now-infamous March of 2020. A walk with my sixty-five pound dog who is somehow still not great on a leash even after two walks a day (or more) for his entire nine years of life. The walk length is variable; long and slow in the summer and quick and short in our snowy Pennsylvania winters.
At first, I just needed the walks to work out tension from the stress of living through a pandemic with a medically-complex child. I couldn’t sit still in my house. I couldn’t go to a gym. But my neighborhood had a few miles of sidewalk, so that seemed like the only option. As the months of the pandemic dragged on though, the walks became less desperate and more enjoyable. I spent less time powerwalking my anxiety away and more time strolling through the rows of houses and taking in the scenery. It began to feel less frenzied and more meditative. And it set a good tone for my life to follow. 437 days later (minus a few for a couple of minor illnesses) and counting, I’m still at it, and I have no intention of stopping soon. It’s as non-negotiable as my morning coffee.
Next came a bedtime. Not necessarily a bedtime routine, although I have tried to implement one of these to varying degrees of success. Just an actual bedtime. Not even a really ambitious bedtime like my husband who is in bed every night by 8:30pm. Just trying to be in bed within half an hour of 10:30pm each night. Consistency on that comes and goes, but every time I can settle in to a rhythm of 10:30 for a few nights in a row, I always feel less groggy. I don’t have to spend as much time laying in bed after my alarm goes off, wondering if the five minute increments of extra sleep I can get in between my snooze button taps are worth it.
There are trade-offs, of course. That bedtime means that I don’t get to binge Netflix much anymore (although I can still watch one or two episodes at night here and there.) It means that I don’t get to have as much evening alone time after my kids and husband go to bed. But it’s perfectly timed so that I can read a couple of chapters in a book for 15 minutes while I’m relaxing to go to sleep. It also means that I can reclaim my mornings, by getting up a little earlier and being a little less grumpy. And I can get my work done earlier and being more focused throughout my day so that my interactions with my family are calmer, and my energy is less drained by the end of the day.
Illustration by Alyssa Nutile
And that leads me to my next self-care practice, perhaps the most influential, and boring, of them all: buying an alarm clock, the old fashioned kind with a battery and no radio or weather or anything. Just a clock and a nightlight. This clock serves two functions: waking me up and, perhaps more importantly, making me leave my phone (which has been my alarm clock for the last decade) downstairs at night.
As far as the wake-up goes, my alarm is set for 6:45 a.m., which is before my daughter usually wakes up and late enough that my son (who has been up since before 6:00 most likely) is only just starting to get bored with the cartoons and cereal his dad set up for him thirty minutes earlier. Regardless of my bedtime the night before, this clock goes off at 6:45. If I’m off my bedtime routine, that alarm clock buzzing is excruciating, but the negative reinforcement means I don’t usually stray too far from my bedtime. And when I’m in a good cycle of getting to sleep on time, it’s the perfect morning wake up time. Plenty of time to make coffee, sit with my thoughts (or, more realistically, the news app on my phone) for a little while, and spend the obligatory thirty minutes I need to decide what I’m having for breakfast before my daughter’s nurse arrives.
Regarding my phone, my previous bedtime routine involved surfing social media and reading anxiety-inducing news updates or searching for the likelihood of chronic diseases in otherwise healthy thirty-year-olds in bed until I fell asleep and dropped my phone on my face, which was a cue to double-check that an alarm was on before rolling over and having fitful stress dreams. I don’t think I have to explain to you how leaving my phone downstairs now and using an actual alarm clock instead has both lowered my anxiety and improved my sleep quality.
And that’s it. That’s my self-care routine. Sure, I do a few others things here and there. I have coffee every morning. I’ve dabbled in skin-care. I have had the revelation that I need to enforce better boundaries for myself (implementation is a different story). I paint my nails every week.
But mostly, I prioritize the smallest things that have the biggest impact. And for me, it’s going to bed and getting up at the same time, leaving my phone alone, and moving my body. It’s not revolutionary, and that’s exactly why it works for me.
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About the Author:
Alyssa Nutile is an artist, writer, and mother of two living on the shores of Lake Erie. Alyssa’s work explores the complexities of modern living, mental health, and navigating parenthood as the mother of a disabled child. Alyssa is an artist by training, but finds just as much creative fulfillment through writing, and most of all, enjoys combining the two. She is a regular contributor to Motherscope's Mom Salon and has previously published work for Kindred.
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