End-of-daylight-savings dread - Did my plan work?

Wow, it's halfway through December already! The good news is I survived November! As I've mentioned a few times on this blog now, I did not cope very well when the clocks changed in 2020.

And regardless of the reasons for that I did not want to go through another two week tunnel of darkness again! So, for the first time in my life I was super pro-active and came up with a plan, and I wrote out this plan here and here. And as I've alluded to, I actually got through November unscathed, and felt quite good doing it :-)

Read on to find out what worked for me, and what things I didn't quite manage to achieve.

Leave the house!

I think this is the thing that had the greatest impact, especially leaving the house in the evening (which is often the hardest thing to do, but it definitely had the biggest bang for it's buck - in my opinion of course). Some things worked better than others so here is my detailed update:

• Signing up for netball. This has been a bit mixed. The start of the league was delayed, and we didn't have enough people in my team to ensure we could actually play every week. So I only played once! But now I have moved to a beginners league (which is not based on matches) and kicks off in January so fingers crossed
• Signing up for an evening course. This was great! I signed up for a Sitcom Writing course with City Academy which ran for 6 weeks with a class every Tuesday. Apart from really enjoying the course (and writing a 15 min sitcom episode by the end!) it was a great excuse to leave the house as well as meet new people
• Stopping online shopping. I largely stuck to this, which meant that just the general needs of shopping and returning items forced me to leave the house more frequently Even when I shopped online I opted for collect in store (which I hope is a more sustainable option anyway)

I was also hoping to leave the house more frequently during the day so let's see how I did:

• Grocery shopping. I actually didn't do much grocery shopping during the day, as I tended to do longer evening walks to stores that were further away (to get my steps in) to get my daily groceries
• Coffee shop visiting. I only did this a handful of times. Maybe less than thrice! So not a huge success, but it was cheaper :-)
• Walking to work. This was much more successful! Working/relocating to the office at lunch time really works for me (and luckily works for my company). 

Overall I found it hard to leave the house during the day, unless I was going to the office. This could be due to the fact that on the days I wasn't going into the office I didn't put in a lot of effort to my appearance 😂

Double down on self-care

In anticipation of the winter blues I decided to focus on different aspects of selfcare. So how did that go?

• Take Vitamin D. Ha! I think I took my Vitamin D drops twice since the start of November. I don't feel that this had a negative impact but I have been diagnosed with very low vitamin D so I would like to get this habit going again
• Commit to a challenge for a month. I committed to doing 100 squats per day in November. Pretty random, but it was a way of marking the passing of November, as well as nudging myself into exercising while watching TV (i.e. If I am watching TV then I should do 100 squats). This one went quite well. I only skipped one day, and that was because I had serious jetlag/lack of sleep going on
• Use the extra hour. I was planning to use the "extra" daylight in the morning for yoga. Which I did, for about a week 😂 Then I travelled, and when I came back it was dark in the morning anyway. Plus, my evening yoga habit is now so ingrained that I can't fight it. But I did find myself reading in the morning so that was nice!

Embrace the changing season  

Instead of getting sad that all the light was gone, I wanted to try and get into the new season with a couple of autumnal activities that I could do daily.

• Light all the candles. This is going brilliantly. In fact I am burning a candle right now 🕯️ I started off burning a lovely candle that I got for my birthday, and then progressed to the Christmas candles from Beauty Pie, specifically the Gingerbread candle and Hot Chocolate candle (yum!). When it's particularly gloomy I've been known to light one at 8 am. Totally worth it!
• Get into hot drinks. I am drinking more tea, and I've started to fill my hot water bottle at the same time. I can't believe I've never done this (except to manage period cramps) but it's so cosy and saves on heating. Win win!
• Indulge in (healthy-ish) comfort food. It turns out I am still bored of cooking 🤦 Zero points for this one.

Treat yo'self

Sometimes you just need to treat yourself to something nice to feel better. Historically, I've been pretty bad at treating myself so this was something I thought I should actively work on. Let's see how I did:

• Autumnal scents. It was my plan to buy a new scent for my diffuser (i.e.  Forest Therapy from Aromatherapy Associates) but I couldn't find it in any stores and I still haven't ordered it. This has been a good reminder!
• Autumnal drinks. I had my first spiced pumpkin latte this November. Yay! And it was extra special because I had it in Boston! (More on that shortly). Next up I'd like to try the Quality Street Toffee Penny Latte from Costa. These drinks are not the healthiest but it's fun to indulge occasionally!
• Autumnal activities. I've started my Autumn Harvest puzzle! And I feel like it's going to keep me occupied for longer than I initially assumed 😆 I forgot to tune into the BBC's radio Cosy Up to Autumn programming but there's still time.

Bonus tips

• Music 🎵 This is going quite well actually. As planned, I've started to leave music playing in one room of my flat all day. This way I get a little jolt of music therapy whenever I walk into that room, and I honestly think it makes me happier
• Swing therapy - soon to be trademarked 😆 I only did this once, but one evening I was feeling particularly down so I put my local swing to use, and felt much better for it! I can't even remember why I felt so bad! 
• [New] Go to Boston! I was super fortunate to be sent to Boston for a work trip in November. Boston was beautiful - the autumnal colours of the trees was just next level, plus you can get pumpkin flavoured everything (beer, cocktails, coffees etc). This trip could not have been more perfectly timed to coincide with my "embrace the season" objective and I feel very lucky!

Right, another very long article from me. I hope there's something in here that you find helpful. From Instagram it seems like a lot of people struggle with this this time of the year, so if you have any tips please share!

Natalie x