Sometimes I get so wrapped up in whatever I'm researching, or writing, that I totally lose track of the time and the next thing you know the morning sun is shining bright outside my windows.
So I decided to set myself a 'GO TO SLEEP RIGHT NOW' alarm.
My bedtime alarm is set for two in the morning - mainly because I've gotten so used to working 3-11 that it's a natural time for me to be winding down.
If you work 9-5 or 8-4 or 7-3, do you get home and go straight to bed? I doubt it.
It takes a while to settle myself, even if I'm dead on my feet exhausted. Going straight to bed is a waste of time since I can't fall right to sleep anyhow.
So I give myself permission to stay up late - and just lately I've been staying up way TOO late.
Getting home between 2330 and midnight, a couple of hours to shift gears ought to be all I need, right? One would think so.
Working this shift (3-11) actually fits pretty well with my natural inclination to work late.
When a person's work day is not exactly like most people's work days, the whole rhythm of their life kind of fits itself around that schedule.
We don't get up, wash up, have breakfast, get dressed, go out the door, work, then come home for supper, do stuff for a few hours, and go to bed at a reasonable time.
We get up, do stuff for a few hours, eat, maybe grab a power nap, wash up, get ready for work, work, do stuff for a couple of hours, and go to bed in the middle of the night.
When I stay up until sunrise, there go those first few hours of doing stuff, out the window- the 'extra' hours I put in after work end up making me more tired all the way around - and aren't as effective a use of my time as they could be because I'm going into them already exhausted from eight hours of pretty hard work.
These past couple of months I've put in more shifts than I wanted to, so had to make up the 'lost' days on my in-between days off ... eighteen hour days spliced into 'regular' shift-work days have been necessary but they aren't exactly good for me. They've cost me more than I should have had to pay and almost more than I could afford to pay - not in dollars and cents but in physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.
So.
No more extra shift-work for this woman (got the schedule thing straightened out thank God), and a more regular daily schedule - one that doesn't include staying up ALL night - leaving myself permission for an occasional all-nighter because I know full well that those are bound to happen.
Still, setting a GO TO BED alarm might help me to remember that whatever I'm doing can be done tomorrow.
The writing itself (the books) - that can sometimes be a different story. There ARE times that the flow of the writing will have veto power and I'll stay with it for as long as it takes and THEN rest. There ARE going to be times that I'm definitely not going to hear my alarm and say oops time for bed - not if I'm in the middle of something whose flow will be lost and probably not found again if I just stop suddenly.
Right now, however, the only things I'm likely to be writing for the next while are press releases, blog posts, journal entries, possibly some poetry, and short stories ... none of which are long enough or complicated enough to require the massive writing hours that a long story line and a looming deadline entails (not to mention the unwillingness/inability to stop except at a logical stopping point).
I've just hit the snooze button on my alarm.
Heh heh.
It will remind me again in a few minutes, with a nice little harp ripple rather than a jarring 'WAKE UP! GET READY FOR WORK OR YOU'LL BE LATE!'
And yeah, of course I realize that I can just turn it off and keep on going - but I also realize that my brain and body are going to perform better if I give them some rest.
yaaaaaawn ...
Good night, this woman is tired now and going to bed so that she won't be even more tired tomorrow and can maybe tend to business and get things done.
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