Making My Home A Haven

I missed joining in last week when Tammy first took over Making Your Home a Haven, but this week she's talking about getting to bed on time.

Not that that's something I ever struggle with. (snort.)

Since writing that post a few weeks ago, I'm doing better as I pay attention to the time and don't let myself get distracted in the evening. Recognizing that in order to be in bed ready to sleep by 10:30, I need to back everything else up and think about how long it takes me to get ready for bed, how long to wrap up whatever I'm doing, etc. I try to really start thinking about heading towards bed at 9:30, and 10:00 is my absolute get-myself-moving deadline.

And it works. Amazingly enough. I've managed to wake up shortly after 7:00 without an alarm almost every day - weekends included. I seem to need significantly more sleep currently so I'm going to gradually see if I can nudge that wakeup time earlier without it demanding a bedtime any earlier than 9:30; anything earlier than that just doesn't work well if I want to spend any time with L in the evening.

I think the pregnancy is not only causing me to need more sleep, but also to have a shift in the timing for my energy levels - used to be that I was much more productive in the late afternoon/evening. Now, I find that I have better luck tackling stuff earlier because after about 5:00 I'm exhausted, both physically and mentally. This is also motivation for me to get out of bed and start working in the morning - I got lots done last Saturday before noon and I think most of the credit goes to the fact that I got up at 7:15 and got right into my morning routine.

And now, on that note, it's definitely time for me to get to bed!

Monday night/Tuesday morning update:
Was in bed by 10:30, although not really ready to sleep until 10:45 or so. I did sleep as well as I ever do now, and woke up without the alarm at 6:50. Got up immediately too, thanks to my need to visit the bathroom which keeps me from lazing about in bed too long.

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning update:
In bed on time, and although I didn't sleep well I still woke up before the alarm at 6:45.

Wednesday night/Thursday morning update:
Yeah, not in bed on time at all. More like 11:30 - I made a phone call when I should have been making my way to bed and then I talked for much too long. Then I compounded this by reading for another half hour before finally heading to bed. Still woke up at 6:30 though somehow. (Somehow in this case was definitely due to the shrinking bladder space)

On Night-Owl-ness and Self-Discipline

What I find very frustrating about myself is that I am so naturally a night-owl, and I'm trying desperately to turn myself into an early-bird. My goal used to be to get up for work at 5:15, and have time to read the Bible and pray in addition to getting ready for work. Then leave for work at 6:30 so I'm at work shortly after 7:00 (or in the parking lot at least; it's another 10 minutes minimum to walk from my car through the parking area into the building and finally make it to my desk. 15 minutes if I've chosen my shoes poorly that morning).

This worked well enough, but the weekends just kill me - I so easily slip back into staying up too late, and I can't get up in the morning, so on Saturday and Sunday I sleep in, then I'm not tired to go to bed, then I stay up way too late on Sunday and Monday I really can't get up on time.

Let's not even talk about how Sunday and Monday night football or baseball games mess with my schedule. If for no other reason than evening sports on TV, I wish I was in the Pacific or Mountain time zone instead of Eastern.

And none of this even takes into account what happened when morning sickness struck with a vengeance and I so quickly had to shift my work schedule to accommodate the daily vomiting sessions. I'm doing much better with that, but I haven't been able to get back to my previous schedule. Hence the "used to be" above. I haven't thrown up in the morning in a couple of weeks, but I haven't been able to get back to getting up before 7:30 at the earliest!

Self-discipline has never been one of my strengths and I think this is just one aspect of it. And I'm about to the point of making it a priority to work on this; I've got to get better control over myself and stop slipping into the bad habit of staying up too late because it just messes up my entire week.