Spend minimum 20 min reading before bed

I’ve been doing this for a while now because it helps me relax for bed, it also makes me feel really tired and as my eyes grow heavy I just put the book down and go to sleep.

Looking back to the original plan, I now have a functioning clock in the back. A nice big clock/alarm/radio; $2 at sal-army. (There goes this goal somewhat, but with it I can sleep better and less fitfully the last couple hours before getting up.) I browse thrift stores (Goodwill, etc) regualry, and deliberately looked for one that had an alarm that was acceptable sounding. Especially not one with that extremely common chipset w/uber-obnoxious alarm everybody’s familiar with, that’s been around since the 80’s. (Watch The Matrix if you absolutely must hear an example.) No alarm is truly pleasant, but this one… Whoever came up with that chipset should pay small restitution to everybody who’s had to put up with that sound. It seems to be falling out of favor though, fortunately. Alarms should have a choice of several different sounds. Easy enough nowdays with highly-computerized things.

Anyways. Just need a better light now.

I originally wanted to mark this as finished after building the reading light. But I’ll add that to another goal I’m thinking of, about fixing up the back area altogether. I’ve long-since been reading regularly before going to bed.

I haven’t built my light yet, but have been able to get back to reading in bed on a regular basis thanks to other factors. (Factors I’d rather not rely on though—so I still want to get the light built.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Good to find a 43T goal about it. :) I want to start doing it again; it’s probably been at least a year and a half since I used to read in bed semi-regularly or more. I do miss it.
To do:
Set up the bed and the back area more comfortably. To illustrate, the back and front areas are separated by chest-high shelves. I sleep in the back next to the shelves, where, naturally, I keep books and used to have a light for reading.

Get another alarm clock. The one I had stopped working reliably quite some time ago. I haven’t really needed one at all it turns out (I’ve almost never overslept since; I should add this to the “I have done this—worth doing” list) but it’s necessary to be “backwards” so I can see the VCR clocks out front. I can’t be in the corner by the shelf this way, which is the main reason my “reading/sleeping corner” fizzled out. (This and a habit of always sleeping with the TV on that I’ve since largely kicked. As an aside, I wouldn’t mind having a monitor and some sort of stereo in the back for those occasions when I do want to go to bed with the TV on in order to catch glimpses of games while in bed, or play tunes. It’s kind of a comfort thing I like to do on occasion. Just don’t need to do it consistently anymore.)

A good light. This I’ll likely need to build. Dim so it doesn’t light up the whole area and prevent easily falling asleep but just bright enough to read by fairly comfortably, subtle, diffuse, neutral color trending toward orange/yellow, even coverage to allow reading facing either way. Having a bright pinpoint of light within line of sight (even in the corner of my eye) is annoying and distracting. I don’t want to have to use the pillowcase as a shield like I needed to with a small light on the shelf. I.e. light on the page but not in my eyes. I’m thinking a large-ish light source a few feet directly overhead would work, that’s open to the wall above the bed and partly translucent underneath. A combination of orange, yellow and white LEDs would give off a decent color. A modification of one of those desk lamps mounted on swing-arms would be a possibility.

Good lord, I’ve been doing this for ages and yes, sometimes I stay up past my bedtime. No, I frequently stay up past my bedtime. Nevertheless, I just can’t-and I don’t understand or care why-go to bed without at least a few moments of the printed word.

Not a real bad problem overall.

its so nice to just chill out at the end of a stressful day and read. its the only time I seem to be able to catch it a good solid block of reading. i get books done a lot faster and find myself reading longer than 20 minutes.

I tend to have bedtime books that are more relaxing than the books I read during the day. This is a wonderful ritual to add to your day.

I’ve trying to read 20’s before bed, but it makes me sleep faster. I found why I couldn’t not do this thing before bed, because I have read a boring book. LoL:} I suggest that I should not read any boring book before bed. I could listen to a talking book. I think it is a good habit, then I will keep doing it.

I’m doing pretty good with this, though I’m not sure the gossip girl novels count.