How Can I Curb My Crap Life Routine?
My life/sleep routine is an absolute mess.
This weekend I was away in Dorset and I slept till 10am because I was just so physically and emotionally exhausted and being away from home gave me the opportunity to get it all out.
I am constantly tired, it's just some days are more tired than others and I have tried to curb it so many times - to no avail. So I've done what I know best; I've come to the blog to explain my lifestyle to you in the hope some of you have some cracking ideas to get me on track again.
Here's hoping.
Sleeping routine:
My sleeping routine is all to pot, hence the constant tiredness. I need a good 8 or 9, preferably 10 hours sleep to feel fully rested but more importantly I need restful sleep. Unfortunately I am the world's lightest sleeper, I wake for anything. Joss breathing funny will wake me, the dog snoring will wake me, an unusual creak of our house will wake me. I have been filling in a sleep tracker since July and on average I have 3 nights a month where I don't wake up. That's 3 restful nights sleep a month and sometimes, like October I don't have a single one.
I also am a night owl and find it hard to switch off at night or settle down for sleep. I know I should put my phone away a few hours before bed but we don't have a landline and I have family who need to get in touch with me all hours so my phone is next to my pillow. I have in the last few weeks started turning my wifi off when I'm sleeping so I don't wake mid sleep to a barrage of notifications which has gone someway to helping but before I go to bed I like to wind down by reading blogs, the only time I get the chance to read them so I am online right up until I switch my light off.
I generally go to bed around 11pm because I simply don't feel tired enough any earlier and that really doesn't matter how tired I am in the day. If I've been falling asleep at my desk all day I'll still be wide awake at 10pm unable to settle down.
However, I also get up early. I wake anywhere between 7am-8.30am depending on what I'm up to for the rest of the day which I know isn't early but when you haven't had good sleep is like getting up at the crack of dawn. We used to wake up at 5am and go to bed at midnight when Joss was a carer and I felt more human and awake then than I do now because we had weekends to recover and sleep for 12 hours.
Work routine:
Working from home means I don't work a traditional 9-5 in any which way. My office is in my Mum & Dad's house so I travel the 15 minute journey every week day which feels like my 'commute' and gets me into work mode. However, because I'm such a night owl I find it hard to get going in the mornings but really wake up mid to late afternoon.
My work day routine looks something like this; get to my Mum's around 8.30am/9am and have breakfast with a vlog or something in front of me. Fill in my bullet journal for the day which gives me my to do list and I spend the morning catching up on some TV whilst doing smaller admin tasks like my emails, scheduling tweets, editing photos etc because my brain just can't get going. After lunch when I normally go out for an hours walk or something round where my parents live that gives me the get up and go and I'll start after dinner afresh. It might be blog photography, commission work, illustration, packaging orders, finances etc - whatever it is it'll be more hard work or require more thought on my part but by then I'm motivated. Then come around 5pm I'll be thinking I need to go home but I'll be invested in what I'm doing so I'll be rushing or stressed out or annoyed I have to go home and I'll come back around 6pm/6.30pm.
The rest of my evening is spent making and eating tea with Joss, the general tasks of running a home and then blogging in front of the TV (like I am doing right now, watching a documentary on the Ganges by Sue Perkins FYI). I work really well at night, I used to work right through the night when I was a student till 5am, so I get my blog work done in the nights and hence my inability to go to sleep.
Life routine:
My life is busy these days - that's the crux of it. My work used to be 5 days a week but now it's 3 and every single evening. My brother and his fiancée have work and uni to contend with so myself, my parents and my brother's inlaws are childcare for my 2 and a half year old niece. She's split between all of us over the week and I have her a Monday and a Wednesday from 10am - 6pm which means work doesn't happen unless she naps and my days are spent entertaining her, feeding her, teaching her, going out, taking walks, trying to get her to sleep and all the general demands of a toddler.
Weekends are busy these days too, something which used to be sacred for me. Saturdays are spent mostly doing all the household chores I have missed during the week because I was so busy or, at this time of the year (between September/January) it's spent cidering. My boyfriend and his family have a cider business run from our farm and every weekend of autumn is spent selling it in markets all over South Wales, sometimes multiple events per day so we're often out of the house early and not back till it's dark. Sundays are for my family where we all relocate at my Mum's house and have a Sunday roast and do quizzes and play with my niece and it's all wonderful but it literally leaves me no time to myself in my own home.
I am lucky that I have a very understanding boyfriend who is literally so oblivious he doesn't notice when I come home 2 hours late or doesn't bat an eyelid when I ring from the car to say I have nothing in for tea and can he maybe do it. Or doesn't whinge when I haven't done the laundry all week even though it's 'my' job yet I nag him for not doing the dishes when that's 'his' job. We never have time for each other, we never have date nights, we never get out of our lives for more than a day or two a few times a year and he never questions the fact I put us somewhere at the bottom of my priorities list because I know he's solid and easy to rely on.
I also never have time for myself. My Whatsapp squad asked me the other day when I do anything for me or when I'm not busy and I really don't know when the last time was. (That's a lie, I did it this Sunday but that's a story for another day). I don't have time out, I don't have time where I'm not working or switched off. I just don't have enough hours in the day.
I have also mentioned in some previous rants that my mind is never switched off. My family have not had the easiest of rides the past few years and it's not the time or place to into it, and I may never elaborate but it's left me the peacekeeper. It's left me moral support for people I relied on for support, it's left me in role reversal with older family members, it's left me mediator for everyone's problems. I can't tell you the amount of times in the last few years I've been called up late at night for help, to sort someone's problems, to pick someone up, to take someone somewhere, to get my niece to bed or to take her medicine or emergency babysitting. The amount of times I've had to play peacekeeper, to sort finances, to sort arguments, to keep people together and it's a fucking drain. And knowing I need to stop taking on everyone's problems is not enough because I know what the outcome will be, and how much worse it will work out. But lord it fries the brain.
And so, after that marathon of an insight into my life I turn to you cherubs for the answers. Don't tell me I need to slow down or stop taking other people's problems on because I know all of that and it's very hard to just say no.
So if you have advice on how to curb a lifetime of rubbish routines, to go to bed earlier (because I honestly think that'd be a real healthy change), to make getting up easier then I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks gal pals.
