Simply Mother

Blog posts are sparse right now because, while my mind is always working a mile a minute and I have plenty to say (when has that ever not been the case?), Time doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with me.

Actually, I’m pretty sure the problem is I don’t know how to cooperate with him. I read this article (found via the lovely Organic Sister, who tweeted about this post) and realized that I am fooling myself every night when I think, “I’ll just finish this up and then clean up ‘real quick’ before bed.”

Because Real Quick still involves Time, no matter how much I’d like to pretend it doesn’t, and before I know it I’ve pushed myself an hour or more past my bedtime.

And maybe it’s because I’m not as young as I used to be, or maybe it’s the tres hijas, one being very tiny, and also thinking I am her very own personal all-night buffet, but I am really needing my sleep these days. If I don’t get enough sleep, even by an hour, I am slow and groggy and grumpy and so much less productive throughout the day that it makes that extra hour of cleaning or blogging or whatever it was the night before so not worth it.

The article I linked is all about having a fixed schedule. Basically, it means paying proper respect to Time, not pretending it will pause for a bit while I fold some laundry.

I need to set my schedule (and I’m not talking about a crazy one wherein I fill it in in half-hour increments, becoming a tyrranical drill seargent in the proces. Just a very basic outline, with set waking and sleeping hours.) and then stick to it. “Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule,” the author challenges.

It makes sense. If I’ve determined I need to be in bed by 10pm (yes, I know, crazy), in order to get up at 5:30am (even crazier) to meet my friends to go running at 6 (insanity), then I need to face reality up front when I start writing a blog post or folding a mountain of laundry at 9:57 that I am really deciding not to go running the next morning. Time doesn’t bend, and it’s a myth that I’m going to get more done by staying up late or working longer than I planned. That time is always accounted for somewhere else, and what I’m actually doing is cutting out the important things so I can satisfy the trivial.

How silly. I need to figure out what my priorities are, plan for them, organize my schedule, and cut whatever isn’t necessary.

Then I need to stick to it.

Most desperately, I need to learn how to go to bed.

Filed in: self-reflection | December 8, 2009