One of the dangers of being the Mom of this household is that I rarely get a moment to myself. Well, that’s not entirely true. I get about 15 minutes to myself to shower in the mornings as long as the kids don’t wake up early. Plus, if I time it just right, I can escape to the bathroom for a minute or two at a time before the kids start banging on the door. Other than that, I’m pretty much out of luck unless everyone (including hubby) goes to bed before me.
To combat this lack of alone time, I’ve started staying up later and later at night. About the only time I can accomplish anything is after the kids are put to bed. This usually doesn’t happen until around 9:00, and then I have to balance the remaining time with the hubby, household chores, meal planning, bill paying, reading, web design, blogging, photo editing, knitting, and all of the millions of other things I enjoy doing. Oh, and don’t forget keeping up with my favorite shows! It’s all quite exhausting just thinking about it.
Recently I’ve been working on building a new web site for the church we’ve been attending. It has taken up pretty much every free moment I can find over the last few weeks between communicating with team members, updating information, troubleshooting, editing, and creating new content. The only way I can feel like I’m accomplishing anything is to spend a couple of hours a night on it and it still has a long way to go to become the site I want it to be.
While I’m definitely enjoying the challenge of creating this web site, it is wearing on me quickly. Each night seems to get later and later as I strive to get just one more little thing done. Then, when I finally give up for the night, my head is still racing so I need a distraction before I can fall asleep. So I go to bed, pick up my book, and read until I’m ready to fall asleep. Before I know it, it’s 1:30 a.m. and I have yet to turn out the lights.
This would all be just fine if I could sleep in until 9:30 or 10:00 the next morning, but unfortunately, the alarm goes off at 6:30 and it’s time to start another day. As much as I wish it was, five hours of sleep just isn’t enough. Somehow, I need to teach myself to shut down a little earlier. My body is going to give out sooner or later.
The good news is that tonight is my TV night. I plan to leave the computer turned off, settle in my chair with my knitting and watch three entire hours of good shows. With a little luck, I may even get to bed an hour or two earlier.
I have been having the same issues- but at our house the bed time rituals start at 7:30 and they are in bed by 8. I don’t care if they don’t fall asleep right away but they have to stay in their room. This gives me my MUCH sought after alone time. I don’t know how you manage with so few hours of sleep, I would be a zombie.
Every single night I am determined that I will get to bed an hour or two earlier, but somehow get sucked into all of my todos, hobbies and tasks. When I get absorbed in something, I just can’t tear myself away to go to bed.
When I DO look at the clock and realize that I must go to bed, I can’t get to sleep because like you my mind just racing. Oh well we’re all works in progress I supose. Thanks for sharing Dee, I hope your knitting was both productive and relaxing.