Resetting the Clock

Unlike Daylight Savings Time, resetting my inner clock takes a ton of effort.  Some people can simply go to bed earlier or wake up earlier.  For whatever reason, that's never worked for me.  I will go to bed and lay there for hours until my body says, "Okay, NOW it's time to sleep!" which generally tends to be the time I normally would have gone to bed.  This can also sometimes trigger week-long bouts of insomnia.  Waking up earlier in the morning likewise doesn't help.  It just ensures I will be cranky and tired all day, and I'll still go to bed at the same time at night, only to need more sleep the next morning.

So I'm going to try the one thing I know that works.  I'm going to exhaust the heck out of myself.

It didn't work so well last night - I was feeling sleepy enough for bed at 9, but did I go to bed?  Nope.  I still hadn't eaten dinner.  Hadn't had any time to relax.  My body was super stiff.  So I made myself food, and vegged.  I probably would have gone to bed a little earlier than normal, but I was waiting for the hubby to get home so he didn't interrupt my pattern.  And I was up with him until 2, when HE went to bed.  After which I began my going-to-bed ritual, so that I was asleep by, oh, 3.  Since he also opened this morning, I ended up getting five hours of sleep.  Oh, and I also ended up crying all over myself because I was too tired to fend off the emotional onslaught of post-trip processing.  Yuck.

The trick, I think, is so much physical exertion that I WANT to go to bed before midnight.  That this seems an appealing option, rather than a loss of the only time to myself I get all day.  After all, I will get two hours during good daylight to write or read or blog or whatever, I just have to be rested enough not to nap with the berrykin.

Yesterday, I backpacked the baby down to the market.  2.5 miles.  27 pounds of baby.  8-ish pounds of food on the return trip.  It was more than exerting enough.  Today, I'm sore.  I don't have to worry about dinner or sorting the car or ANOTHER day of laundry.  Which means we can go for a walk, wear me out again, and then let Jeremelon handle the food.  Hopefully, because he'll also be home early, I can go to bed when I want to go to bed, instead of when it works best.

Then I just have to do it again tomorrow.  And the next day.  And the next day.  I'm already much more awake and ready to get up this morning!