Sleeeeep

A few years ago I decided to take a different approach to New Year’s Resolutions. Rather than entering the new year gung-ho with a list a mile long ready to CHANGE EVERYTHING, I decided to devote the entire year to learning and growing in different areas. I assigned a different focus to each month (one was yoga, one was counselling, one was gardening) with the idea that this structure would allow me some time to acclimatize to each new change, and make it a part of my routine before adding another new resolution into the mix. (I wrote about the thinking behind this style of resolution-making for my Guardian column last week, too)

I went all out and created vision boards for each month to keep me on track, and I loved it. It was a great way to ensure that I was progressing and improving and learning all year instead of starting strong but fizzling out mid-January.

So! I’m doing it again this year. I’ll be sharing my monthly resolutions throughout the year, with updates on how the others are carrying through.

January, for example, is bedtimes.

No, not for Olive. For me.

Ha! Seriously, though.

I am a night person. I have always been a night person. The ideal schedule for Madeleine’s world would be going to bed at 2 am and waking up at 10 am. The hours between 10 -2 are when I feel my most awake, creative, and vibrant. I love the darkness, the secret quiet. I love everything about my soft velvety nighttime adventures.  Buuut, I don’t so much enjoy going to bed at 2 am and then waking up at 8, when Olive does. Six hours might be enough for some people, but not I.

Six hours of sleep leaves me waking up like this:

Yeeeeah.

Since moving here, I’ve taken on more writing and editing work to make things fit financially while doing this on my own, and in doing so, what little balance I did have over these night owl tendencies of mine flew out the window completely. I was staying up later and later to get projects done, then waking up exhausted and having to drink coffee to be able to cope with starting another day, goddamn it! I was perpetually three steps behind and every morning felt like a brutal slog where I tried in vain to get Olive to talk quieter, slower, less.

So! For the first time in, oooooh twenty-five years, I have a bedtime. A goddamn bedtime! Every night at 10:50, I pack it in – whatever I’ve been doing – and get ready for bed. At 11 I am in bed. And then my alarm goes off at 7 am.

Since I started the bedtimes on Jan 1, I usually find myself lying in bed staring at the ceiling for a few hours while my brain goes nuts trying to figure out why we’re WASTING THIS TIME, and then not falling asleep until around 12:30-1 am anyway. BUT, I expected this, it’s going to take a while to get used to this new routine, and this is why I like the month-long resolution adjustment period.

Internet, I am tired as balls lately. And not drinking coffee, because while I have zero intention of quitting it completely, caffeine isn’t terribly conducive to this whole schedule reset I’m trying to do. So, imagine that miserable face above waking sleep deprived and THEN trying to take on eighty-five other resolutions? No. Not happening.

So. Now you’ve wasted ten minutes of your life reading about a 32-year-old’s plan for a bedtime.

I’m sorry/You’re welcome.

Happy New Year!