Who Needs Sleep?
Saturday, December 12th, 2009When I asked for topics to blog about Hannah suggested “mustering the will to expend great energy on projects”. Just this week I looked around our backyard and I saw peas to trellis, invading morning glory to fight off, and bare patches that needed re-seeding and I though “Eh, I’m cold and promptly went inside and ate a brownie sundae.” Yesterday I had a flat of late season strawberries sitting on my kitchen counter and after I got both kids down for a simulnap* I thought about crushing them and starting the jam making process but instead grabbed a down comforter and curled up on my sunny couch to take a nap. And you may recall that I made some grand proclamation about blogging every day during the month of December but it’s looking like every other day.
But for me, all of the above: coming into the house and taking a break when I got cold, trying to take a nap, and going to bed rather than blogging, are success rather than failures. You see, I actually have the opposite problem that Hannah alluded to; I have an overabundance of will and expend far too much energy on projects with the inevitable result that I end up painfully achy and a tired that borders on utter exhaustion. It sounds like a “good” problem to have, but it’s truly a struggle for me not to overdo life. Until a couple of years ago I didn’t recognize it as a problem, but the demands of children and a progressive disease (rheumatoid arthritis) have made it impossible to ignore. Now I am searching for the right balance in life between treating my body kindly in a physical sense and satisfying my, at times obsessive, need to be productive. It’s often more a battle than a search. Many people find TV, meditation, a hot bath relaxing but none of those traditional stress relievers work on me. I find producing something to be one of the ultimate forms of relaxation. I discovered in college that baking from scratch really soothed me and so to this day I will find my inner peace by baking bread, a cake, or cookies. I also find being in the garden intensely soothing. Further compounding the problem is that while I love to sleep and would probably function best with around nine hours a night I am naturally a night owl and find it impossible to go sleep before 11:00 pm. Adding fuel to the fire is that I seem to have spawned another night owl clone of myself in Thomas. He is often up until 10:00 or 11:00 with me, happily canning jam or grocery shopping late at night. Earlier this week we were talking around 10:00 pm, winding Thomas down to go to bed, and got to the subject of Christmas presents. He wants to make Christmas presents for his friends and brightly suggested that we “do some crafts”. When I reminded him that it was bedtime he protested, “But I’m not tired. I want to start a project!” And for a split second I found myself thinking, “Yes…now is a great time for a project! It’s quiet, Henry is sleeping…” and then I remembered: it’s quiet and Henry is sleeping because it is late at night and time for bed! I am, quite typically, awake until around 2:00 am when I seem to have a natural wave of sleepiness descend upon me. This schedule worked adequately before I had children, but now I stay up until 2:00 am only to have Henry wake up shortly thereafter which means I don’t fall asleep soundly until around 3:00 am. Then Henry wakes up once more before his ultimate wake-up time of around 8:00 am. And of course, he could care less if it is a weekend or not. The end result is that I am chronically sleep deprived. And with rheumatoid arthritis, sleep deprivation is a double-edged sword resulting in not only exhaustion, but relentless joint pain – pain that is only improved with rest.
You might suggest that I hire a housekeeper or a gardener or that I could actually (gasp!) buy bread. But quite frankly, that’s not going to happen. Not just because such things are expensive or big uses of energy but because doing so will make me feel sick. Wait, didn’t I just say that overdoing things makes my arthritis flare? Well, yes it does, but even when I am in agonizing pain I don’t usually feel sick. But when I have to give up something I love doing because of my arthritis I do feel sick – and weak and that is something I hate more than almost any amount of pain. Rheumatoid arthritis has taken a lot of things from me and if takes my ability to be productive I feel like it will have taken me.
But I am trying so hard to step off this train of projects and slow down. I don’t enjoy pain and I want to be able to be a good role model for my children in terms of taking care of myself. I am doing that by prioritizing. It’s important to me to make our own bread and jam, but as much as that book “Home Cheese Making” tempts me on my shelf I’m getting my mozzarella at the grocery store. Our little farm/garden is picture perfect, but I didn’t prune my roses for four months. And even though there are nearly always dishes to wash, one last email to send, or another sentence to write in a baby book, sometimes I just go to bed. I am coming to terms that it is quite allight to accomplish n+1 every day rather than n+10. I’ve accepted that forward progress does not mean that every one of life’s incremental steps is positive, instead sometimes I stand still or even take a step back. It is the big picture over weeks and even years that is positive. So, this year I am purchasing more Christmas presents than I am making (a step back from last year). I make bake 90% of our bread (standing still). And today I am not as tired as I was yesterday because I allowed myself to take a nap yesterday (forward progress).
* Simulnap = simultaneous nap = awesome.