Slowly, oh so slowly, I have been edging back my getting in to bed time and getting out of bed time. Now that I am not responding to student emails for three hours every night, I can once again try to tackle the sleep dilemma. I don't sleep well (years of chronic pain mess with all aspects of your life), and I've been told that we've done all we can messing with all the sleep-related side of things. The only way for it to get better is if we address the pain/neurological side of things. Since that's not going well, I'm trying to find a balance between ruthless adherence to keeping the time in bed short (6 hours) to encourage my body to be efficient with its time in bed and just giving in to my body's exhausted demand for more time not doing anything (sometimes 12 hours).
If I only allow myself 6-7 hours of time in bed, I am a bit more clear-headed, but I am also very short-tempered. If I let myself stay in bed as long as my body appears to want (10-12 hours), I am much more mellow but also much more muddled. I'm shooting for somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 1/2-9 hours in bed since then I won't feel like I'm wasting all sorts of extra time trying to recharge batteries that won't charge, but I also won't feel like I'm demanding silly things from my already overworked body.
It's not easy, but I have been making progress the past week, at the expense of everything else. I think I've spent too much time trying to do everything at once with a brain that shorts out when it only has one thing to do. I'm going to try to tackle things one at a time and really put my foot down about that one thing. Other things will suffer, and that will be okay. Really. My to do list does not contain anything that will cause world-wide problems if I fail to do it this week. Priorities.
Willpower, go!
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