It’s Not About the Coffee

“Time isn’t holding up.
Time isn’t after us”
– David Byrne

Challenge: No Coffee

Rules: No coffee, hot or cold. No caffeine substitutes. Only Sleepy Time Tea permitted.

Why I Cut it Out: Funny story. I didn’t! I had every intention to cut it out. I got off to a great start, especially considering that Day 1 landed on the Sunday after a very full wedding weekend in Chicago. But things took a turn around day 6. Let me back up.

The day that I was leaving for Chicago, I went to CVS to pick up a refill on my anti-anxiety meds. Through a series of unfortunate events, my practitioner hadn’t approved my refill and then apparently fell off the face of the earth for 4 days. Though I’m not on a super high dose, anyone that has gone cold turkey off any medication can tell you that it truly sucks. I made it through the majority of the weekend just fine, though extremely irritable with my practitioner and random strangers on the street, but the withdrawal symptoms were kicking in on the way back home. I had vertigo, my head was pounding, my heart would randomly start racing, and all the anxiety was back. I FINALLY got my medication but it’s not easy to readjust once you’ve been off for longer than 48 hours. This made sleeping difficult and because of this, I was coming to work like an absolute zombie. I actually dozed off at my desk not once, not twice, but three times that first week. (this is actually a test to see if any of my coworkers actually read this blog. If so, just know that I was only out for 5 minutes. 7 minutes tops!) That week I had an appointment with my regular therapist and I told her about my symptoms of getting off and getting back onto meds. Then I told her about the No Coffee Challenge.

“Ok, well, I’m sorry, but that’s just dumb,” she said, bluntly.  “Yes, high amounts of caffeine for someone with your anxiety is not recommended, but give yourself a break. You’re just coming off a Zoloft withdrawal. Why add caffeine withdrawal to your life right now?”

I took that light enablement and ran with it! One tall Americano, please!

I was going to just throw in the towel and say “Eff It” and not give anything up this month, but then the universe stepped in. A day after I gave into drinking coffee again, I accidentally smashed the face of my Apple Watch. Since this isn’t the first Apple product that I have mishandled, I knew that I could easily submit a request through Apple Care and get the face repaired, but I saw this as an opportunity to try a new challenge.

New Challenge: No Watch!

I got my watch on my birthday last year. I never had explicitly asked for it but somehow it became exactly what I wanted. I loved being able to record my workouts and see my heart rate, getting text updates or news alerts, and I even loved those gentle yet passive/aggressive reminders that it was time to stand up and do something with myself for God’s sake. The future is now!

The biggest benefit was using my watch during triathlon training. Being able to track my distances for the swim bike, and run helped me tweak my training and see improvements in my performance. Plus, I was connected to some coworkers and it would send them a notification when I completed a workout and vice versa. I can’t wait for them to see all the calories I’ll burn when I submit my workout on race day, I thought. Totally normal. Not competitive at all.

When people asked me if it was distracting, I would argue that it was no more so than my phone. The difference was I could just get the highlights instead of getting on my phone and falling down the internet suck tube. I now see that my friends were nonchalantly telling me that it was distracting. I was constantly looking at it. Every vibration on my wrist seemed important enough to break concentration from a friend’s story and look down. I had a Pavlovian response to the “Time to Stand” notifications as though I was a Russian sleeper cell getting orders. I was obsessed with closing all 3 Activity Rings. It was becoming a problem.

So, when I smashed the damn thing 3 weeks before the race, I was pretty upset. I had no clue how I was going be as effective without father time telling me if I was fast enough or not. The fact that I was even stressed about it showed me that I needed to give it up.

The Results:

There were many things that changed for me this month, but the most important was the time with my boys.  For me, parenting is a competitive sport. Everything lives and dies by the clock. “Kids need a schedule,” someone once said and of all the parenting advice I have received, that one always stuck. I was sure that not having a watch to easily tell time would send our lives into chaos.

What actually happened was much better. Instead of saying things like “we need to be in the car in 4 minutes” and meaning it, I forced myself to take a beat and relax. The only one that “has” to be anywhere by 8am is me and it turns out, I have some really understanding bosses (at least, I did before I published this and they can see that I fell asleep at my desk). My kids always seem to have meltdowns or tantrums right in the threshold of leaving the house and now I could see why: they were reacting to their crazy, anxiety-ridden mother who was saying things like “T MINUS 90 SECONDS”. It’s a lot of pressure to put on the kids. Without my watch acting like a bomb that was about the explode, we took the necessary time to put ourselves together and leave. One day, we got all the way to school and my Little Man forgot his shoes. (Non-Parents are saying “How??” Parents are saying “Been there, done that.”) Having to drive all the way back home would have normally sent me spiraling, but as I looked at my son’s shoeless feet, I saw him shut down and get upset.

“Now you’re going to be late, right Mommy?” he asked, and I could feel how disappointed he was in himself.

“Nah, it’s fine,” I said. “We’ll just have a little more time in the car, that’s all”. And I meant it. We got to listen to the Lego Movie Soundtrack more and talk about his day. I couldn’t believe how many times I took our car rides for granted, all because I was worried about a timeline that didn’t even exist.

Other great side effects: Not being panicked about the terrifying news updates, actually responding to texts because I get them on my phone and don’t just see them, swipe, and forget to reply, and not giving a shit about how many steps I did (or didn’t) take that day.

So, what did you learn:

Let’s talk about the race. I registered for it in January when everyone is all hot and heavy on New Year’s Resolutions. Though I had been strength training for 5 months and cardio training for another 5, I was NOT feeling ready for this distance. I never had that euphoric feeling after a good run or swim that made me feel like I was going to do well. I was also training and doing this event all by myself. I didn’t have a training buddy or a mentor to do the race with me. I was all alone. “Everyone races alone,” I would tell myself.

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. It was chilly without humidity. The water was warmer than the air and there was a slight breeze instead of gusts of wind. The race started early and the sun was coming up as I began the near mile-long swim. It was a well organized but underfunded event. There were several different distances competing at once with various start-times so there were no clocks throughout the course until the finish line. That meant for the entire race, I had no idea how well I swam, how long I was in the transition areas, how many MPH I was going on my bike, or what my running pace was. I couldn’t even gauge this off other athletes as I was doing this alongside people competing in different distances. Did that girl pass me because she’s only doing the sprint distance or am I just slow? Did that guy lap me on the run because it’s his first lap or because he’s doing the 1/3rd Iron Man and he’s a beast? It was nerve-wracking at first and then surprisingly and suddenly, it was freeing. “You’re not competing with them,” I said, as a woman kicked by me in the water. “You’re not competing with them.” And then it washed over me like rain; all the times that I was comparing myself to other people, looking over my shoulder to see where everyone was, feeling empowered when I felt I was ahead of the game. My relationship with time was beyond a stupid accessory. This was about how many times I didn’t think I was where I was supposed to be, that I was too old to be trying new things, that I wasn’t fast enough, that I didn’t work hard enough, that I wasn’t enough. There I was, running with legs that were cramping up, watching person after person pass me, trying not to feel defeated.

“You’re not competing with them,” I said over and over to myself. “You never were.”

At the finish line were my babies, holding handmade signs and jumping up and down. When I crossed the finish line, I wanted to cry. Race Volunteers put a wet towel on my shoulders and handed me the “you participated in this event” medal.

“Mommy, you won!” my kids shouted.

“Yup,” I replied. “I sure did.”

I didn’t. Didn’t even come close to where I wanted to finish. Not that it matters. My only goal was to finish and then never do another race again. My body is getting older and it feels like I have been working out every day for 3.5 years.

Which is why in October, I’m giving up…

WORKING OUT

Stay Tuned.