I am 39 this year. My birthday was August 26.
I am painfully conscious of the fact that this is the last year of my 3rd decade.... that FORTY is coming. As such, I decided that if I was EVER going to get my ass in gear, it should be THIS YEAR... so that I could go into my next decade with some semblance of order/balance/peace.
I purchased a book called "The Gift of a Year" by Mira Kirchenbaum. The premise: taking a whole year to do something 'for yourself'. It could be anything---a sabbatical, planning for and then finally taking the 'trip of a lifetime', or just plain focusing on self-nurture...
I chose the plain focusing on self-nurture and decided, as simple as it sounded, I was going to give myself the gift of a year of SLEEP. Going to bed at a reasonable hour for a whole year.
I started September 1. And as luck would have it, right around that time, my son (aged 2.5) is changing his sleep patterns and is not passing out before 9:30 the earliest... Which doesn't leave me very much free time before I'm choosing to hit the hay. This has become an issue for me. I need the down time, to read, to putter, maybe to take a shower. So it's now become a pain in the butt to go to bed early... because I want to read!
I think I need to re-think my gift of a year, ha ha! No point in doing something that adds tension instead of taking it away.
I am painfully conscious of the fact that this is the last year of my 3rd decade.... that FORTY is coming. As such, I decided that if I was EVER going to get my ass in gear, it should be THIS YEAR... so that I could go into my next decade with some semblance of order/balance/peace.
I purchased a book called "The Gift of a Year" by Mira Kirchenbaum. The premise: taking a whole year to do something 'for yourself'. It could be anything---a sabbatical, planning for and then finally taking the 'trip of a lifetime', or just plain focusing on self-nurture...
I chose the plain focusing on self-nurture and decided, as simple as it sounded, I was going to give myself the gift of a year of SLEEP. Going to bed at a reasonable hour for a whole year.
I started September 1. And as luck would have it, right around that time, my son (aged 2.5) is changing his sleep patterns and is not passing out before 9:30 the earliest... Which doesn't leave me very much free time before I'm choosing to hit the hay. This has become an issue for me. I need the down time, to read, to putter, maybe to take a shower. So it's now become a pain in the butt to go to bed early... because I want to read!
I think I need to re-think my gift of a year, ha ha! No point in doing something that adds tension instead of taking it away.
posted by Lu @ 12:02 PM
1 Comments:
At September 08, 2005 4:04 PM,
ChristineMM said…
Well, sleep is a necessity of life, as it is required to keep ourselves healthy. I am not sure I think getting enough sleep should be considered something to try for one year, it is something to strive toward for the rest of our lives.
I once saw an Oprah show with a doctor who feels that Americans in general are almost all sleep deprived. He felt many illnesses were attributed toward lack of sleep. He also feels that everyone should take a 15-20 minute nap, daily!
I am sure you can find a balance between reading and sleeping. We all have to find some sort of compromise.
It was one thing when my children were younger and nursing during the night. But now that they are sleeping through the night and not nursing, I am trying to make myself go to sleep and get the rest I need. I do this probably more so that I am a nice person the next day, than for my general health and well being.
Good luck with finding the right balance!
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