What time do you go to bed and wake up currently?

I have gone through a lot of circadian rhythms in my time on our planet. I used to lay in bed as a pre-teen with a torch reading books until all hours of the morning. I used to get in trouble for it but did not want to leave that fantasy world where life for me was better. In hindsight, that could have been a trigger to my migraines but I just wanted to live in my books.

I had my first child at 18 and was still going to bed late but had to learn how to get up earlier. Hindsight is again unkind and I see that having a young baby and a huge sleep debt was a bad thing.

I don’t think I started going to bed early until before I met my husband. I was always waking up early and feeling like I needed a nap in the middle of the day but could not enter a sleep state as the anxiety and restlessness of ADHD would not allow the process of letting go.

When I started dating my husband, we would go to bed early on weekdays but weekends meant very late nights due to his security work. At that stage, I was dragging myself out to his pub and setting myself up with text books in a corner until he finished for the night. It became my favourite way to study and still steal some small, intimate moments with him in passing.

When he left the security world and entered back into commercial cleaning, we would go to bed early and wake up super early for him to get in and clean the commercial premise before it opened for the day. I found this hard as sometimes, I just didn’t want to go to bed when he did. It left me feeling a little lost and alone, but I would also get up early and put in a few hours of university study before he got home for the day.

Once I had graduated, I started going to bed early again and kept the early rises. This continued into Covid times but homeschooling meant life was a little more relaxed, and we got more intentional exercise as we would have morning and afternoons walks when we were allowed out of our homes but had lost our jobs due to the shutdowns.

We moved for my career and it was harder to wake up earlier due to the colder climate. I ended up training myself to wake up earlier as I enjoyed working early and coming home when there was still sunlight present. Going home in the dark felt oddly surreal and I did not like it at all.

Then my husband and father got cancer and I started not sleeping well at all. I would wake up at all hours of the night and had to make a pact with myself to wait until at least 4:00am to get out of bed or I would not be able to function.

Being able to function meant being able to care for hubby during surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and immunotherapy. It was a hard life but having my Dad dying from brain tumours in a different state sent my anxiety through the roof. I know my Mum was having the same sleeping problems and I know it was hugely traumatic for both of us at the same time.

The only thing I really like about waking up early is being able to catch the sunrise. It is truly a magical part of the day.

Of late, I’ve been back to the late to bed, early to rise regime. Taking up knitting has given me something in which to gain flow state and I love sitting with a movie or my CPA study whilst hubby watches TV shows I just wouldn’t want to watch. We still get to sit together and that is enough for a loving connection and companionship, but we just don’t always like the same things and that’s ok.

If I do go to bed early now, I will wake up at that 3:00am point and it is impossible to function through to dinner time when that happens. If I aim for 10:30/11:00pm bed, and 5:30/6:00am rise, I feel I get a better quality of sleep. The only thing that can improve that is regular exercise and that is the next thing I want to re-implement into my routine. Cancer has rocked our world but I need to get me back.

The next quote is as much a push in the right motivational direction for me as I would like it to be for you:

“Success isn’t always about ‘greatness’, it’s about consistency. Consistent, hard work gains success. Greatness will come”

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson

Until tomorrow, KT18Ø