sleep comes softly
Exhaustion comes in and take me over every afternoon.
I've been carrying a heavy burden of emotion and responsibility for weeks now, and I thought the exhaustion would ease up as the burden lifted, but my body is too, too tired to carry this. I find myself driving nearly every afternoon. Taking kids here, driving kids there, picking up, dropping off, groceries, errands, you know the drill. I get there and I'm fine. I turn around to come home and I can barely keep my eyes open.
As a preventative measure, I take naps. Maybe we've talked about power naps before. I used to sleep 2-ish hours in the afternoon when I was tired. I'd wake up in a fog, it would take another hour to fully wake up, and then that blasted headache would come on like a siren in my head. After stumbling upon some good reading on sleep, I tried a 15 minute nap.
Committing to a 15 minute nap is like committing to a 1200 calorie/day diet. It looks bleak. It gives the air of impossibility. it's not. And actually it's awesome. I've been doing it for a while, trust me when I say this. It's the best nap option of all the nap options.
I wake up from my power naps feeling better. No headache, no grogginess, and I don't lose a big chunk of my day to sleep. It doesn't have a negative affect on my nighttime sleeping habits. It's good.
Here's what I do:
1. Tell everyone to let me take a nap. I'll be up in 30 minutes. Better to set the fences out a little bit in case I don't get right to napping.
2. Set a timer for 15 minutes.
3. Get comfy in bed and let my mind go.
4. Don't try to sleep.
What was happening in the beginning was that I would worry about not falling asleep before the timer went off, then I'd fret over the minutes the whole time. Once I quit worrying and reining in my thoughts, I was able to unwind and find real rest in that short stint of time. The thing is, I don't even sleep for most of it, but I do completely relax. I'd dare say I fall asleep for 5 minutes, in total. It's not much, but the other 10 minutes of uninterrupted rest are just as powerful as the sleep itself.
I've been doing this every day for the past few weeks, and let me be clear about this. It's a luxury in my day that I cherish like a precious treasure. It makes me feel better when I don't feel good.
So there it is. You might need a nap. Take one. You can. Just do it. Do it. do it... (aren't you sleepy already?)
lvb
I've been carrying a heavy burden of emotion and responsibility for weeks now, and I thought the exhaustion would ease up as the burden lifted, but my body is too, too tired to carry this. I find myself driving nearly every afternoon. Taking kids here, driving kids there, picking up, dropping off, groceries, errands, you know the drill. I get there and I'm fine. I turn around to come home and I can barely keep my eyes open.
As a preventative measure, I take naps. Maybe we've talked about power naps before. I used to sleep 2-ish hours in the afternoon when I was tired. I'd wake up in a fog, it would take another hour to fully wake up, and then that blasted headache would come on like a siren in my head. After stumbling upon some good reading on sleep, I tried a 15 minute nap.
Committing to a 15 minute nap is like committing to a 1200 calorie/day diet. It looks bleak. It gives the air of impossibility. it's not. And actually it's awesome. I've been doing it for a while, trust me when I say this. It's the best nap option of all the nap options.
I wake up from my power naps feeling better. No headache, no grogginess, and I don't lose a big chunk of my day to sleep. It doesn't have a negative affect on my nighttime sleeping habits. It's good.
Here's what I do:
1. Tell everyone to let me take a nap. I'll be up in 30 minutes. Better to set the fences out a little bit in case I don't get right to napping.
2. Set a timer for 15 minutes.
3. Get comfy in bed and let my mind go.
4. Don't try to sleep.
What was happening in the beginning was that I would worry about not falling asleep before the timer went off, then I'd fret over the minutes the whole time. Once I quit worrying and reining in my thoughts, I was able to unwind and find real rest in that short stint of time. The thing is, I don't even sleep for most of it, but I do completely relax. I'd dare say I fall asleep for 5 minutes, in total. It's not much, but the other 10 minutes of uninterrupted rest are just as powerful as the sleep itself.
I've been doing this every day for the past few weeks, and let me be clear about this. It's a luxury in my day that I cherish like a precious treasure. It makes me feel better when I don't feel good.
So there it is. You might need a nap. Take one. You can. Just do it. Do it. do it... (aren't you sleepy already?)
lvb
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