Last night while star-spotting, I found Coathanger for the first time. Coathanger is an asterism (a group of stars that only WISHES it were an official constellation) that looks like a coat hanger (duh). Only visible through binoculars, Coathanger is located between Altair and Vega, two of the three stars in the Summer Triangle, which is also an asterism. Anyway, after driving out-of-town to the darkest spot I could find and panning the Summer Triangle with my binoculars for a few minutes, I finally found it. There it was–clear as day.

Er–clear as night, I guess.

I can’t tell you how excited I was about finding Coathanger, despite the fact that it was the only new star arrangement I clearly identified last night. I actually squealed out loud. Sure–it was just one little thing, but it WAS one little thing.

In yesterday’s blog I mentioned that I was going to try to get to bed EARLIER, exercise MORE, and drink beer and coffee LESS. Well, it’s twenty-four hours later, and that’s what I’ve done. After stargazing last night, I gave myself a bedtime–lights out by one in the morning. Oh my gosh, y’all, I slept great and actually woke up with a “certain amount” of enthusiasm. When I came bounding into the kitchen at ten-thirty with a smile on my face, Dad said, “What are YOU doing up?”

At breakfast I gave myself another “boundary”–no coffee after noon–since I read in Why We Sleep that caffeine has a half-life of seven hours, meaning that seven hours after you consume caffeine, fifty percent of it is still in your system. (I also read that caffeine doesn’t tell your body to wake up, but rather blocks the receptor sites in your brain and body that receive a self-produced chemical that tells your body to go to sleep.) Anyway, science is science and facts are facts, and I’ve decided that in light of the science and facts with which I’ve been presented, it clearly won’t do to keep consuming pints of coffee at all hours of the afternoon and evening.

So wish me luck.

For exercise today, I went for a walk/jog. And whereas I got home and my stomach STILL looked the same as it did before I left, I’m telling myself that’s okay–my goal is to be in better shape by the spring. That’s two seasons or twenty-four weeks away, which I figure is plenty of time to see results if I simply make several small, positive changes and STICK TO THEM. I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes, but I usually have a sense of when I’m “serious” about things, and it feels like I am.

It’s time for something different.

Today I read that during NREM (non rapid eye movement) sleep, your brain decides what’s important– what to keep and what to throw or away, what to move from short-term to long-term memory. (REM sleep is when your brain INTEGRATES what’s kept with what’s already there.) So after reading about this throw-away/keep process, I applied it to my Amazon Wish List, the place that for the last eight years I’ve collected hundreds of titles of books that have peaked my interest. Come on, Marcus, I thought, there’s NO WAY you’re ever going to read all these things. (This is called being honest with yourself.) PLUS, dozens of them don’t even look interesting anymore. So I deleted maybe half of them, which still left me with more books than I could possibly read even if reading were my full-time occupation.

What I like about the way NREM sleep works is that–ideally–it happens EVERY DAY (er–night). Like brushing your teeth or taking the trash out, it’s effective not because it’s this HUGE thing, but rather because it’s consistent. So I’m telling myself that I can be consistent too–about taking simple healthy actions, about periodically getting rid of what’s no longer useful, beneficial, or interesting. And whereas the process of change is often overwhelming to me, I’m trying to approach it as I approach learning about the stars, asterisms, and constellations–one little thing at a time, one little thing at a time.

[Astronomy screenshots by the Stellarium app. In the first one, Coathanger is labeled along the line between Altair and Vega. In the second one, you can still see Altair on the left, then Coathanger (unlabeled) on the right. HINT: There’s a big red circle around it.]