My Self-Care Days Ends at 9pm With Curlers In

My self-care days start with cold water before I've properly woken up. There's a pool here at the cottage, and a quick dip first thing does more for my head than any morning routine I've ever tried to copy off the internet. Ten minutes. Sometimes less than that. Then I'm out, dripping across the grass and actually awake.

The way I rest probably wouldn't look restful to a lot of people. No spa day. No phone shut in a drawer. No big switching-off. I tried that version for years because everyone said I should, and it left me twitchy and bored and somehow more tired than when I started.

So I stopped pretending. This is what a genuinely good day looks like for me, and it works because it's mine and not somebody else's idea of calm.

I start in the garden for self care days

Before anything else gets decided, I go out to the garden. This is the bit I'd never skip. Pulling weeds and seeing what's come up overnight settles my brain in a way no screen ever manages. I'm not precious about it either.

Some mornings it's twenty minutes of pottering and a coffee going cold on the step. Some mornings I lose a full hour out there and forget I had a list of things to do at all.

That's usually the sign it's working. When I stop clock-watching.

The everything shower

I'm not a bath person. Never have been. Sitting in water that's slowly going cold while I'm meant to be relaxing just makes me restless and a bit grim. What I love is what I call an everything shower. The full works. Hair washed and treated, skin scrubbed, legs shaved, the lot, until I step out feeling like a brand new person.

It takes as long as it takes, and that's rather the point of it. I'm not rushing to be anywhere.

If a bath is your thing, grand. It isn't mine, and I stopped feeling like I was doing self-care wrong for preferring a long shower.

I work with something on in the background

Here's where I lose the wellness crowd entirely. On a proper self-care day I'll often have the laptop open. A favourite film or a series I've seen a hundred times playing away in the background while I get on with something I actually want to do. Usually that's my novel.

Writing doesn't sit in the same box as the rest of my work. It's the thing I'd do whether anyone paid me or not, so doing it with no deadline and a film on is about as relaxed as I get. I know the advice says rest means doing nothing.

For my brain, doing nothing is its own kind of stress. Pottering at the page with something familiar on in the background is the rest. Make of that what you will.

9pm, curlers in, done

By nine I'm winding down for real. Hair bar in for overnight curls so I wake up with them already done and one less thing to think about in the morning. Curled up on the sofa or in bed, lights low, nothing left that needs doing.

I don't feel an ounce of guilt about being finished that early. There was a stretch where I would have, where stopping before ten felt lazy. Not anymore. Nine o'clock with curlers in and a series on is, to me, a day well spent.

It's not for everyone

None of this is a method. I'm not going to tell you to do it my way. A pool dip, a long shower, an afternoon at the keyboard with an old film on, and an early night with my hair set for tomorrow.

That's the whole thing. It would probably wind some people up, all that "work" folded into a rest day.

But it's for me. It relaxes me. And after years of trying to rest the way I was told to, that turned out to be the only thing that mattered.