Dinner is finished. The dishes are put away. The next part of the evening is open, and the familiar question returns: what now? A difficult stretch can have an ordinary place on the clock, between activities that already have a shape.
You can prepare for that stretch while the day is still easier to organize. Write down when the gap begins, where you expect to be, and what you could do there. Then check whether the activity and support you have chosen will be available.
Cravings and Hard Hours Workbook, by Stephen Deason and Melissa Deason, gives this task a place on the page. Its My Hard Hours worksheet asks readers to mark difficult hours and write a plan beside them. Other worksheets help readers prepare contacts, identify situations, and review what happened afterward.
Put the hour on the page
Open My Hard Hours and mark the stretch you want to prepare for. Choose a stretch you recognize from your own experience. You might write “after dinner, alone in the kitchen,” or “the gap between leaving work and getting home.”
The clock entry tells you when to prepare. The setting tells you what the preparation needs to cover. An evening at home may call for an activity you can begin immediately. A journey may call for a route or contact arrangement you can use along the way.
In a hypothetical example, you finish dinner and remain in the kitchen with your phone. Your plan might be to wash the dishes, put on your shoes, and walk with your brother. Ask your brother about the arrangement before writing his name into the plan. Record what you will do if he cannot join you.
Keep the first action concrete. “Put on my shoes” gives you a task to begin. Put the shoes where you will see them and decide where the walk will start.
Prepare the contact
The workbook's My Call List includes the contact's name, number, usual availability, and what you can ask for. Fill in those details for the contact you want beside your hard-hour plan. A conversation about availability can also establish whether a call, message, or planned visit works best.
For example, you might ask your brother whether he can talk while you prepare dinner on evenings he cannot walk. Write his answer beside his number. Keep an additional agreed contact or activity ready for an evening when his plans change.
The My If-Then Plans worksheet can help connect the situation to the response. Write the situation in words you will recognize when it happens. Then write the action you have prepared. Keep that sentence with the hard-hour worksheet or copy it onto the workbook's wallet card.
Review the attempt
The Daily Urge Log includes spaces for what was happening, what you did, and whether the action helped. Use those spaces to record the evening in concrete terms. A note such as “my brother called while I washed up; we arranged tomorrow's walk” preserves details you can use again.
Add any obstacle that changed the plan. The weather may have stopped the walk. Your brother may have been unavailable. The planned activity may have needed materials you had not gathered. Write the obstacle beside the part of the plan you want to change.
The workbook also asks what helped most and what you will do tomorrow. Use those prompts to carry a useful action forward. If the difficult stretch still needs more support, take the record to someone involved in your care and ask for help planning that stretch.
Before your chosen hour arrives, complete its entry, confirm your contact's availability, and set out the materials for the first action. Afterward, record what happened and change the part of the plan that was hardest to use.
Related book
Cravings and Hard Hours Workbook, by Stephen Deason and Melissa Deason. The edition page includes the free printable and available retail edition.