Stress and sleep

I woke at 4 a.m. today, my mind already fully alert and on work.

Today is Saturday. This is not how I wanted my Saturday to begin.

I knew I wouldn’t fall back asleep, so I got up to feed the cats and water the Christmas tree. When I began journaling, and all the words that came out were questions about how to solve problems I’ve been thinking through at work or want to make decisions on by the end of the year, I gave up on trying not to think about work on my time off. I leaned into it, figured I’d use the time my mind was already on it to scribble formulas and “if this, then that” statements in my notebook, and maybe 4am Saturday me will make Monday me’s day easier.

I’ve slept poorly all week, waking most nights at 3 or 3:30 or 4. The dumb cats don’t make it easier to go back to sleep after those those middle-of-the-night wake-ups. As soon as one of us stirs or they sense an awake human, they consider it breakfast time and start clawing carpets, rattling doorknobs, and running over us on the bed. This can go on for hours until one of us gets up to feed them.

I always want the end of the year to be a restful, cozy time to chill and celebrate the season. Every year I’m surprised and disappointed when it’s not. Both of our kids’ birthdays are between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and when they were younger, late November and all of December were jam-packed with activities and planning and lists of things to coordinate and order and decorate and experience in a rapid succession of deadlines. Now that the kids are older, we don’t have the birthday party planning, but I work now, so there’s the shopping and birthday-cake making and big-swim-meet-volunteering and fall-turned-end-of-year chores to tetris into our days while devoting the bulk of our brainpower to full-time jobs. For some reason, every year, I think things will slow down at work, and they don’t. This year, work seems to have sped up, likely because we recently got to gather in real life for the first time in 3 years, and we all came away from our company meeting full of ideas and excitement for how to shake things up and make them better, and we have momentum, and I don’t want to squander that.

So, December is not currently restful and chill. I’m hopeful I’ll sleep better tonight since I got some stuff down on paper that I’d wanted to get to last week and ran out of uninterrupted time to complete. Sleep makes everything better. It is a necessary pause to give our bodies and minds time to rest and restore. It brings calm and clarity, which help chill happen. I do have a fed, contented cat laying on me now, with her face tucked into my arm, purring. As soon as I finish my coffee, I’m going to lay on the couch under a blanket and read before I start in on the life stuff I need to do today.