Sleep

If you know much about me, you know that I have always had a problem with sleep. Not that I don’t like sleep. I love sleep. I just have never been able to get enough. In fact if you look at the times that I’ve been posting blogs lately, you might think that I’ve timed them to go out in the middle of the night. Unfortunately that is no the case. Every one of these blogs has been posted right after writing it.

I truly think that something is wrong with my inner clock. It seems like it’s on a different cycle then everyone else’s. I’ll be fine for a while. Than all of a sudden I won’t be able to sleep for a night. Which leads to some interesting times while taking care of the kids. But then I have to go to bed early that night. And it leads to my days and nights being switched.

Before we had kids I actually thought some of this would help me. Most of my life, I’ve been able to function on very little sleep. In college most of my papers were written in the middle of the night. It’s always been when I do my best thinking. For some reason, my mind thinks a whole lot clearer with little sleep. Maybe that’s another reason these blogs are written in the middle of the night.

But, as it turns out, kids take so much more energy to raise then sitting through a class, or stumbling through another day at work. Max is up and ready to take on the world most days at 6 AM. Before kids, the only time I saw 6 AM was on the end of an all-nighter.

Part of the problem might be that I’m a night person, and in order to be up and moving at 6, I have to go to bed way before my body would normally want to. Plus, after the kids go to bed is the only time I actually get to hang out with just Jennifer. So, it’s not like I just want to rush to sleep as soon as the kids are down. But most nights I’m not too far behind them.

Then it seems like a night will come along, and my body will rebel against this trend and keep me up. Even if I’m in bed. Than the whole cycle gets screwed up, and I’m just trying to tread water to keep up with my kids all day.

Another part of the problem is that I’m getting older and cannot go as long without sleep as I used to. My body knows this and will eventually give out. But my mind hasn’t fully wrapped itself around this idea yet. So, I go into a night like I’ve had the last few nights, where I’ve slept for a good portion of the day, and think I’ll just stay up and then all day tomorrow and I’ll be fine. I might have to go to bed a little early, but nothing major. Then morning rolls around and Jennifer and the kids are wanting to do something, and I’m a zombie sitting in the chair. So, I will eventually head to bed and then I’m up all night again.

Yeah, not a very good way to live. But until my body and my mind both realize that I’m not in my twenties anymore and need to sleep when normal people sleep, I guess this is how it will have to be.