Perpetual Ruminations

Friday

Once again I managed to get in here earlier. I want to get this entry out of the way now, and hopefully after I finish I can work on my poem. I've been wanting to create something for the last two weeks, and yesterday I finally got something going. Actually, I've been wanting to get some writing done for a long time, but things just haven't been working out very well. Two weeks ago I set a goal to write something, a story or poem preferably, but anything would do, as long as it was newly created. I didn't get anything written that week, so this week I repeated the goal and again things did not work out very well. I did finally get some writing in yesterday, but not a story or poem.

I ended up just going with my thoughts and writing a long entry in my journal. How long, over three thousand words. But, it's not the same is creating something from my imagination, as I had wanted to do. The entry was more factual of my habit of staying up too late and not getting enough sleep. I also wrote how this wastes time for me, and how it makes me less productive. It just comes down to me not getting enough sleep, wasting too much of the mornings, and not being able to write when I'm so tired. Of course I went more into the details of how I came to be a night person, as well.

I felt better after writing this long entry, but not as good as I would have felt to see a new short story or poem added to my portfolio. But, since nothing was bubbling up from the deep springs of my imagination, I went with it and at least felt like I had given it a good try. After all, by writing this long entry, I had hopes that just maybe an idea would surface and I would complete the goal I set. But, no ideas, no inspirational ideas, just the same rut I've been stuck in for some time now. Not that I feel discouraged by it, I know it's a rut I gouged out by not getting enough sleep, stress from work, and a lot of other little things. I also know, from past experience, that I can climb up out of the rut just as fast as I fell in it.

That was the idea behind my subject yesterday in my journal; my thoughts on how to overcome my sleeping in late on my days off and wasting the mornings, and my not getting to bed early enough on my work days, leaving me so tired I can't write. I didn't really focus on the solutions, but instead looked at how I came to this habit, and why it's so difficult for me to break free from it. My logic is to find a solution to the problem, one needs to understand how the problem was first created, what feeds the problem, and why does it continue to be a problem.

Actually, the answer is simple; go to bed early and get up early. The saying my grandmother told me so often, "Early to be, early to rise, makes a man feel healthy, wealthy, and wise."

And, it's true, getting to bed at the correct time, getting up early, and getting enough sleep does make a person feel healthy. It also makes a person feel more content, and of course, a person can think much clearer if they have a good night sleep. Of course, my grandmother was born and raised on a farm, farmed most of her life, and had no problem getting up at the break of day. She also stayed up late enough to watch the news and weather, then it was off to bed. I also remember her taking a short nap in the afternoon. She would sit in her rocker and read the paper, then tip her head back and take a short ten or fifteen minute power nap.

So, problem solved then. I just get up early, which is easy since I need to be up at three in the morning for work. Then, after I get home, I get my self to bed nice and early, planning on around seven hours of sleep. That seems to be a nice rounded number of hours of sleep for me. I can do well on six, but I do better with seven. Eight is nice, but in the past I have found myself waking up after seven more often than eight, unless I'm ill or just haven't been getting enough sleep.

The problem is, however, sleeping. I get up early, as I mentioned, and then I plan on getting to bed early as well. But, it seems more often than not, something comes up and I find myself up later than I intended. Other nights I am off to bed around eight thirty, but then I don't sleep very well, and spend half the night tossing and turning, jumping up and running to the bathroom, or just trying to get back to sleep after every little noise wakes me. I tend to not sleep hard until the early morning hours, and of course, this is the time I now get up for work. Instead of changing my sleep habits, I find myself stuck in the old habit of staying up late, sometimes midnight or later, then up at three or three thirty. I do pretty good up to about noon or so, then I start to get real tired.

By this time, I'm home and trying to read or write something, but instead I'm dozing in my recliner. I have tried sitting at the desk, the table, etc... to keep from nodding off, and it does help, but I'm so tired I can't think straight. So, I go and take a short power nap, after all, it worked for grandma. But, I don't nap well. In the past, I had great difficulty taking naps at all, even when sick. But now, with my short sleep cycles, I find I can take a nap. It takes a bit for me to fall asleep, but I do. I don't often sleep very hard, and I wake up to various noises around me. Even so, I can fall right back to sleep. By the time my thirty minute to an hour nap is done and the alarm is going off, I'm finally sleeping sound. So, instead of waking refreshed and ready to go, I only half wake from my deep slumber, groggy and unable to think, except about sleeping just a little bit more. Sometimes another half hour, sometimes I'll sleep for another hour.

But, hitting the snooze disrupts my sleep so I don't rest well, and if I don't use an alarm I'll sleep for three or four hours. I'm now rested, but I still can't really focus and concentrate well after all the napping. It takes me a long time to get woke back up, and by the time I finally do, it's the time I should be going to bed. Only now I'm finally awake and just starting to feel like I can get something done. I suppose I could stay up and write, read, review, or what have you, until I again get tired and sleep for another three hours or so before work. I'm sure this would work out fine for me, and I would likely get a lot done. Well, in the past I have done just this, when I was alone and didn't have to schedule around much.

But, I'm not alone now, I'm married to the greatest gal this side of the Rockies -- and that works from whatever side one is on, since to me, she's just the greatest. We have a wonderful relationship and are very close. She is very much in tune to me, and supportive of me, but she does not share my sleep habits. She does best to get up early and get to bed early. She can take a short power nap like my grandmother did and jump up and tear right into things. But, when it's bedtime, she's either going to bed, or sleeping where she sits. She just nods right off when she gets tired. If she doesn't get to bed early, she has a terrible time getting up in the morning, but once she does, she's ready to go.

This wouldn't be a problem, she could go to bed and I could stay up and write, right? Wrong. She can sleep in the chair next to me when I am on the computer, or watching a movie, no problem, but if she goes to bed and I'm not there beside her, she can't sleep. Strange, I know, but that's how it is. She tries to sleep, but if I'm not there beside her, she barely doses off then wakes up and sooner or later gets up to see if I'm ready to come to bed yet. If not, she sits down in her recliner and dozes in her chair. But, I know she's not sleeping sound, and don't like keeping her up, so it's off to bed, whether I can sleep or not. I even tried taking the laptop in to bed so I could get some more work done, but the clicking of the keys keeps her awake. She just needs to snuggle and then she sleeps fine.

So, simple solution, sure. The question is, how to make it work. I know the answer to this, too. I need to get up and not take a nap, then get to bed on time and do my best to sleep. Even if I don't sleep well, I need to repeat this over and over until eventually I will reset my internal clock and start waking up earlier and falling asleep earlier. And, if life doesn't interfere with this plan, this is what I intend to do. How long it will take, I don't know. For a while I know I will not sleep sound, I'll be tired and want to nap, but eventually I will change my habits and start feeling better, getting more done, and find myself back where I used to be -- up early and enjoying the day and early to bed for a good night sleep.