More Sleep?

It used to be that I would look forward to daylight savings time either for the extra hour of sleep or the extra hour of work. Either way, the following morning was just a little bit better. This year, things are a little different. While the potential is still there for an extra hour of sleep it was really more like an extra hour to stay up and get work done. And the morning presented a new slate of issues.

A few weeks back, each of us needing a bit of a respite on the weekends, my wife and I each took a day to sleep in. After a long work week, I preferred to take Saturday morning to remain in bed until 10 while my wife took Sunday to get a little extra rest before the week got started. It is a system that should work well but there are a few hiccups along the way a big one happening this morning.

Our son has been having a few issues sleeping during the week which makes him a little extra tired over the weekend. Of course, it doesn’t help that he insists on getting up at the same time each morning no matter what time he fell asleep or if he stayed unconscious during the night. Needless to say, there were a few rough nights leading up to daylight saving time and even though the dial on my watch may have moved back, the timer in our son’s head didn’t get the memo.

By the time I got him out of bed he seemed a bit out of sorts. It may have only been an hour to many but it made a huge difference to us as we were woken up at the old time. While I always enjoyed the extra hour of rest before, I never truly appreciated that hour until this year. That is a long hour when the bonus time was used to stay awake the night before. Turns out, that wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

Of course, the true impact of the time change didn’t really hit our son until this evening when what he thought was bed time was approaching… after all the windows had been dark for a while so it must be time to sleep. That was the longest hour of the day. But there were some lessons learned and mental notes taken for next year. Maybe the same mistakes won’t happen again when we adjust the clocks in the spring.  

So Long Precious Hour Of Sleep

This weekend our alarms went off a little sooner, our eyes were a little heavier, and our son woke up a little later. The last one was welcomed but the first two we could have done without. With all the changes that have happened recently, daylight saving time was more of a shock to the system than it had been in the past.

One thing that has become precious to us (in addition to our son) is sleep. It is something that we enjoy while it lasts and are still not getting enough of which is why we have been dreading this weekend for months. A single hour may not seem like much to some, there is a good article in Time Magazine about the minimal impact of this time shift, but for us it makes a huge difference in our own sleep pattern and our son’s schedule. With that said, it is nice to wake up to a room filled with sunlight and hopefully the loss of time will mean the rapid arrival of warm weather and a release from the four walls of which we have grown rather tired.

While the momentary loss of sleep is something that we are not fond of, the approach of spring is something that we are both looking forward to. The weather combined with the birth of our son has kept us confined to our house more than usual this year and the ability to go outside and simply walk is something for which we have been longing. Not to mention that the bitter frigidity of the winter has wreaked havoc on the temperature inside our home. And this last note was really the driving force behind the adoption of daylight saving time.

While Ben Franklin is commonly considered the first to propose such an adjustment, the recent history of the adoption has a similar rational. Franklin’s proposal as well as the modern ones were a means of saving energy… candles in the beginning and fuel as the most recent rational. A more detailed look into the modern history can be found on Wikipedia. If you are interested in acquiring some more random knowledge (just in case you are even on Jeopardy) it is definitely worth reading.

So, what it comes down to is that in an effort to save some energy we are going to lose some energy for a day or two. Sometimes that seems like a fair trade but that has to be reserved to hindsight. However, having seen our recent PECO bills this winter I think I am okay with that even if we are a little grumpier than usual this weekend.

Busy Seems To Be An Understatement

Yep. The clock pretty much looks like that right now.

Every day I try to take a few minutes either at the office or at home to just breathe. This is especially true during the weekend when I really don’t want to think about all that needs to be done both around the house and at the office. Of course, the housework can’t be pushed back especially with so little time left. However, lately the same has been true with work as more and more projects and tasks have piled on top of the regular schedule.

Those few moments during my week have been absent as of late with every moment accounted for during the waking hours (and some while I am trying to sleep). Just as one thing begins to fade into the background two or three more come raging to the forefront leaving both my wife and I trying to scramble to just get through the day. This is one of the big reasons why I hate it when people change their schedules or let us know of commitments at the last minute. With all that we are dealing with right now, we need all the support that we can get and sometimes it is lacking.

While we see many of our friends and family taking time to travel, eat out, and sometimes simply relax our days, especially weekends, have been filled with places that we have to be and last minute dinner decisions. On Saturday we finally found the time to sit down and have a dinner out… while Five Guys is not the fanciest place, it was quick and allowed us to get back home and take care of a few more things. There is no time left in the day for anything nicer or travelling much further.

It seems like each night we discover something else that we need to add to our list. Sometimes it is a simple phone call while other times we have to get in the car and either run a few errands, drop things off, or quickly pick up something that we had previously overlooked. Other trips are more regular lately and cannot be put off as we need to visit with family and keep our regular doctor appointments both of which are becoming much more frequent.   

Time being the commodity that it is, this is the poorest that we have ever been. But we have gotten through these things before. While not nearly as difficult as the current situation, we have the strength both in ourselves and our marriage to make it through the days, weeks, and months. While there is no question that we will not be the same after these trials, we will be stronger, healthier, and have a greater appreciation for the life we have and all the memories that can never be taken away.

Fighting Against A Meandering Mind

Distractions have been an issue for me lately. All different kinds of things have pulled my attention away from the things that I should be focusing on including the daily duties that I have at work. Most of the time these things are out of my control and sometimes it leads to being productive in an entirely different area. Other times there are distractions that are once again out of my control and are detrimental to any productivity whatsoever. However, there are also moments when my mind simply wanders and before I realize that there are things that I am falling behind on the hands of the clock have made significant progress. Those are the moments when I can’t blame anyone but myself.

The past couple of weeks have been tough in this regard as I am constantly getting phone calls, text messages, Skype messages, and emails that are taking my attention always from the tasks at hand. Between the messages I receive from friends and family and the random short projects I’m brought into at the office, I have struggled to keep the usual tasks in motion and I have fallen behind on a few of the lodge items on my monthly check list. Some of the tasks or responses only take a minute or two but when your attention span is already suffering it can be a very long journey back to productivity when the distractions keep flipping like a shiny new quarter.

Even at night when I sit down at the computer to pull a couple of blogs together I find myself occasionally getting caught up in a website (not always social media) reading more about a subject than I need to for a casual reference in a post. The worst instances with regard to blog posts are the evenings when I have no idea what I am going to write about, which is becoming more and more prevalent these days, and I go from topic to topic, website to website, reading pages and pages of information just trying to pull together some kind of cohesive series of thoughts. While the writing may only take 20 or 30 minutes, it could take hours before I trip over an idea, opinion, or subject.

So, if I seem a little off or if my thoughts happen to come across as slightly disjointed understand that content is scarce at the moment and there are other things going on that I need to get caught up on. Hopefully this will only be a temporary state but you never know. Besides, I have a little more work ahead of me this week (as if last week wasn’t enough) as we close in on the blog anniversary. That’s right, it is approaching fast. Hopefully I can maintain my focus and find content. Might have to spend some time figuring out what will happen beyond that day too. I guess you will have to keep reading to find out.

Back To Normal

In the past I have dreaded the beginning of a new work week for various reasons but they all came down to a simple explanation that it was not an enjoyable place to go. Having a drastically different schedule over the past two weeks I have been a bit thrown off and looking forward to this evening and the coming week. Everything should be back to normal with my usual five day work week and the long hours that I thrive on.

Having so much time off may be welcomed by some but, for me, it just throws my whole schedule off both in the office and at home. It is obvious that when you’re not in the office that not as much work is getting done, projects become prolonged, and while deadlines are still met it seems to be a bit more of a struggle to meet them. On top of that, when you enjoy being around the people with whom you work, that can be something that is greatly missed during these temperamental times on the calendar.  

However, at least for me, that is not the only thing that suffers. When I am used to working all day it is easier for me to continue working throughout the night on various projects and even taking care of and responding to emails. I guess I have a diesel work habit. When I have the day off or don’t have that transition from home to work, it is difficult to get the mind focused and the words flowing. Even on weekend, I struggle to find the motivation to get the things done that I want to get done (soon they will have gone so long that they will become a need rather than a want).

This may be the driving force behind my need to adopt various duties and responsibilities that need to be worked on every day. While I can put them off for a little while I still have to find some time every day to at least check and make sure things are going smoothly. Maybe my continued issues with this extra time (which quickly becomes lazy fat time) demonstrates a need for just a little more, one more project, one more club, one more group, one more weekly activity. I don’t know. There seems to be a need for something else. Preferably something that both my wife and I can do together.

I guess it is time to look back at my resolutions and really buckle down on a few things on my list. Maybe it’s not a matter of needing something else but a need to focus on what I have already planned on doing or starting. So, time to step away from the blog for the night and figure out where I need to commit more time in order to make some progress on my list of resolutions. At least I have a normal schedule again to balance things out.