Perpetual Ruminations

Saturday

Today I'm kind of late getting in here to write. Not real late, but a little after eight, my time. If I had to work early tomorrow, it would be real late, but since tomorrow is Sunday, I don't have to be there until eight, so I can sleep in until around five thirty. As you can seen, then, this isn't too late, but still a lot later than the last few days have been. I've been doing a lot better at getting this written earlier so I can get to bed on time.

But, even with this done, and trying to get things finished up so I can get to bed early, it hasn't made the difference I had hoped. Not that I have thrown in the towel by no means, but so far there hasn't been much success at getting to sleep earlier. One of the problems has been just getting to bed earlier, and I have made a lot of improvement, in the right direction. Even so, it's taking a lot of time to get the time pushed back to where it should be. I'm doing good, but so far have not gotten to bed before nine. That's a half hour later than I want. I want to be in bed by eight thirty, at the latest, and preferable by eight on the nights I have to be up by three the following mornings.

Even though I have not made this mark yet, I have seen a lot of improvement and nine is a whole hell of a lot better than eleven, twelve, and even one in the morning. That was the typical times for me, with ten to ten thirty making the early nights for me to retire. I know it's going to take time, and with persistance, I will push the time back to eight thirty and then back to eight. For now, nine is good, and even if I managed to get to bed before then, it would serve little purpose.

That's the other problem, sleep. I can go to bed sooner, but that doesn't mean I'll be sleeping any sooner. The last two nights have proved that old habits die very hard, and very slow. I had a terrible time trying to get to sleep Thursday night, and even though it was ten thirty before I even got to bed, and I was feeling pretty tired, I just could not get to sleep. Eventually I did fall asleep, but it was after midnight before this would happen, and then I was up at least six times from midnight to three when the alarm went off. I was tired all day, but fought off the desire to nap, and was sure that I would be in bed early and sleeping early last night.

I made it by nine, and then I tossed and turned, still unable to fall asleep. I did sleep better once I did fall asleep, but it took a long time. I don't know what the time was when I finally got to sleep, but I know it was after eleven before I was sleeping sound. I didn't pay any attention to the clocks the few times I had to get up and go to the bathroom, but Rhonda was up quite a few times and said it was after eleven before I finally fell into a deep sleep.

This should insure that I will fall asleep quickly tonight, but then again, who knows. It's not a matter of being tired, it's that damned internal clock that has me messed up. It just won't let me sleep sound until a set time, and it's going to take some work at getting it reset. But, I plan on doing just that, putting the time and effort into following this new routine until I reset my internal clock and can get a good sound sleep going earlier in the night. I know it's been a long time set where it's at now, and I don't go into the sound sleep until about the time I need to get up. Or, at least that's the way it's been for a long time now.

But, I'm beginning to see results that this is changing. Slow, but sure, it's changing. Instead of being into that deep sleep that is so difficult to break out of when the alarm goes off now, I hear the alarm before Rhonda does. I have an app for my netbook, and it's great. I have it programmed for each day I need to get up, and the different times I need it to go off. Another wonderful feature is it slowly increases the volume as it goes off. So, I have it set to play revile but it starts out with no sound, and over five minutes it slowly increases to the full sound. I now wake up before it makes it past one minute, and still too quiet for Rhonda to hear.

That means I am sleeping very light when it goes off. I'm beginning to adjust to the time I need to be up, and I must be sleeping sound sooner. Now, all I need to do is work on getting to bed a little earlier, and also getting to sleep right away, instead of taking an hour or so to fall asleep. Then, when I have this mastered, I can wake up feeling rested and refreshed, even on the days I work the early hours.