Rest...

...I am finding it somewhat elusive again. I've written about this before - receiving lots of advice that I couldn't quite follow and plenty of empathy from fellow rest seekers. Things have gotten a lot better than they were when I hit bottom. The dishes are (mostly) done, and so is the laundry. I've started tackling my closets one at a time. I am finding a lot of satisfaction in making progress on those particular pits of chaos. The rest of the house doesn't quite show how hard I've been working, but oh well.

It hit me the other day, however, when I could barely force myself out of bed to get started on the day, that I need to start making MY rest a priority. What made it obvious was all of the energy my children had that particular morning. They were running circles around me; quite happy and "productive" in their own way. I realized that we have always made it a point to get them enough sleep. Almost nothing gets in the way of getting them to bed on time. When we have a late night we arrange it so they can sleep later the next day, and I still INSIST on "nap time" for the twins even though they don't actually sleep every time...every once in a while they do which I interpret to mean that they still need it.

Resting via RaGardner4 on flickr

Meanwhile my own sleep seems to take a back seat to just about everything else. Housework I'm happy to put off (really!) but work, writing, food prep, facebook, and e-mail have all been known to keep me burning the midnight oil.

So one of the suggestions that I failed to enact last time I ranted about rest was - define a quitting time. I'm going to try this out for a week and see what happens. I'll try to report back and let you all know how it goes. If it's not done by midnight it will just have to wait...

Since I'm already past my deadline for tonight, I guess I'll close. And go get some rest. Night night...

This post is participating in the Jenny Matlock AlphabeThursday blogfest. Click the icon below to see other offerings inspired by the letter R.