For a long time, getting to sleep was less about tiredness and more about what my mind chose to do when the lights went out. Thoughts would arrive uninvited — sometimes anxious ones, sometimes creative ones. Ideas, phrases, connections. Perfectly reasonable thoughts, just turning up at the wrong time.
What I needed was not silence, but less space for those thoughts.
The basic method
The core of the strategy is simple.
I begin at 1000 and slowly subtract 3 each time: 1000, 997, 994, 991, and so on.
There are days when email feels like a friendly tool. A note from a friend, a reminder of something pleasant, a quiet nudge about a parcel in the post.
But more often than not, it turns into something far larger. For me, it often feels like a living creature — growing, demanding, and constantly calling for attention. One unanswered message becomes two. Two become twelve. Before long, the inbox stops being a place I visit, and becomes a shadow that follows me around the day.
Part of the difficulty is my brain injury and stroke. I no longer read, remember, and respond to messages in the effortless way I once did. If I skim an email and move on, there’s a fair chance I’ll forget it entirely. If I leave it unread, the number sitting in red starts to climb — and with it, a knot of anxiety tightens.
And the truth is, email isn’t just “email.” It’s:
appointments I mustn’t miss
bills that need attention
tasks that require thinking
parcels on their way
messages from people I care about
and endless newsletters that I never asked to receive
All of these live together in one place, and my brain struggles to tell them apart.
So the “email beast” isn’t imaginary. It’s the very real feeling that I am being asked to hold far more in my head than I have space for. And the cost — when things get missed, forgotten, or muddled — is frustration, guilt, and sometimes embarrassment.
But naming a challenge is the first act of taming it. In the next few posts I’ll share the methods, workarounds and habits that are helping me bring this beast to heel — slowly, gently, and in a way that suits the brain I now have.
Half a Mind to .. 