Tuesday, January 26, 2010

My Internal Alarm Clock is BROKEN

From the time I was born my mother has said that my"internal alarm clock" was broken at birth. For the most part my body prefers to be awake at night and asleep during the day, or at least some version of it. More often than not this has caused problems for me since the rest of the world does not suffer from the same condition. When I was working I had to force myself to go to bed at a "reasonable" hour so that I could several hours later force myself back out of the bed. If I was doing well I could manage to get on a schedule where it became normal and not so forced. My schedule would be doing well until a long weekend or vacation. At those times I would allow myself to stay up later and sleep in later. Most of the time this just meant a few days of readjustment or indulging in an afternoon nap. Occasionally during the summers I would wind up getting my sleep schedule so off track that I was physically unable to go to sleep before 3, 4, or sometimes even 5 in the morning. Not a good thing.

Right now I am not working out of the house full time. This is a blessing and what Aaron and I both believe is God's will for me for this time in my life. While it has allowed me the opportunity to really be there once again for my family and friends and even bless others on occasion it has also presented me once again with sleep issues. This time they have come on slowly. For the first couple of months I would go to bed every time Aaron would. I hated the idea of him going to bed and not being with him, plus it was no fun to stay up by myself. In the last couple of weeks I have had great trouble falling to sleep before 2 or sometimes later and have had to absolutely force myself out of the bed somewhere between 10 and 11.
My struggle is that on most days I am free to adjust my schedule. This is great for things that come up or for doing things as I would like. It is not so wonderful when I dont have anything to regulate my sleep. I wish that I could say I was disciplined enough to get up (early-ish) on my own and go about my day but sadly I am not. Now on most days I do get to at least the minimum and the most important things on my to do list--even with my most productive hours falling in the late afternoon and evenings.
My conviction lately has been with the Lord calling me to be more intentional with my time. My hope is that I can start to readjust my sleep schedule once again so that I can make better use of my time. Feel free to ask in the future and see how I am doing. I don't want to change who I am, and I know that I will never be a morning person. My goal is simply to make better use of my time, to be more intentional and accountable.

1 comment:

Stephanie Wilson she/her @babysteph said...

Hope you're coming a long well. I think I definitely can use more discipline with the use of my time!

Steph