Two and a half weeks in, I'm settling in to... well, still caffeine addiction but a lower level of it. I sleep better, and longer, at least if I let myself go to bed on time. I wake up earlier, and most importantly, spend less time hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep after the alarm goes off. When I get my morning coffee, it tastes better — partly because I'm more sensitive to it, but also because now, when I wake up, I'm actually rested enough to make coffee without misjudging the dose, breaking my cup or spilling boiling water on my feet. Win.
I'm moving closer to a regular, nine-to-five working day. That should be handy when I get a full-time job. Also, early-evening appointments (life drawing, running, seeing friends) are now easier to fit into my schedule. I do get sleepy earlier in the evening, but that is by design. I've even stepped up my exercise program to ensure that I'm good and tired by half past ten in the evening. This also helps keep the metabolism going after the coffee wears out. I run twice a week with the club and am now making an effort to swim every day, half an hour at a time. Half an hour isn't long, but it's an amount of time and energy I can afford to spend every day. I'll probably build it up a little in the next few weeks.
I'm also slowly breaking the habit of procrastination. I spend less time distracted by blogs, webcomics and forums, though I need to cut much more deeply into that habit before I'll consider myself optimally productive. It's difficult, because most of the work I do is on the internet and is deeply intertwined with my online reading habits, but it will be worth it just to be able to combine whatever job I get with continued webcomic production. Of course, if everyone did that, there'd be no one left to read my work.
Back to the coffee: I tried cutting down from three cups before noon to two, but I don't think that's a step I'm ready to take, or indeed one that I need to. Coffee's not all bad, after all, as I mentioned earlier.
