by Alissa Dedic
It’s Day 18 of the April 2026 Poem a Day Challenge. I had the Day 18 poem done early this morning. Here’s how and why I was writing so early today.
I have been doing some different things to manage my time better and to practice self-care. One of those things is getting up and doing something called the 5 to 9 before 9 to 5. The idea is to do self-care activities before you start your day. I didn’t do this over the last two weeks while I was sick, but I am better now. Consistency means I can get back to my self-care practices.
My self-care practices look like
- going to sleep at a decent time so I can get up at 5 am
- drinking a glass of water first thing (yes, before coffee)
- eating a high protein breakfast
- taking my vitamins
- reading my Bible and praying
- writing in my journal
- exercising for 45 minutes (part weight lifting and part light cardio)
I started this practice for self-care back in August as an experiment. I was trying to practice better self-care and working on addressing my overstimulated, overwhelmed, anxious, and fearful tendencies. These things had taken over my thoughts and attitudes. After several months, it is not an experiment anymore. It is routine. It is habit. I found it is easy to return to after being sick because I already had a plan and knew what works for me.
Through the month of April, writing in my journal has looked like writing poetry for the PAD Challenge in celebration of April being National Poetry Month.
Here’s the link to the original poetry writing prompt and instructions:
https://www.writersdigest.com/2026-april-pad-challenge-day-18
The poetry prompt was to write a poem about reconsidering. I found that to practice better self-care included reconsidering my boundaries and activities. I was burned out because I was not practicing good boundaries. I had an overfilled schedule because I said yes to too many activities. FOMO is real and so is the fear of disappointing others. It isn’t taking care of myself to work myself beyond exhaustion. Here’s my poem about reconsidering boundaries. I chose to write a triolet.
Be sure to subscribe to my blog for more poems from the April 2026 PAD Challenge and my other writing to come.
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