Tomorrow I Will Be Fun Again
It’s a tired day here today. My racing brain woke me up at midnight, and apparently I’ve reached the age where insomnia is a thing? On the one hand, reading for a couple hours in a quiet room is pretty much my dream at the moment. But I have to say, I wish it weren’t happening at 1 a.m.
Thankfully, I am in a stage of life where I am allowed to move a little more slowly when I’m tired. I’m through the days when it didn’t matter if I slept, there were children who needed to be rocked, walked, and carried all day. Now, I can say things like, “I didn’t sleep much last night. You will be fed. You will be taken care of. You will probably find me ‘resting my eyes’ at every opportunity. Tomorrow I will be fun again.”
It took me ten months of lockdown to accept that “tomorrow I will be fun again” is something that I will say regularly. Not that my insomnia has been that frequent. But between being trapped inside by wildfire smoke and then rain, trying to manage zoom class expectations, and coming up with something to make for breakfast, lunch and dinner every. single. day., there are a lot of days when I am no fun at all.
I’ve avoided putting forward a new theme or series on this blog. I don’t feel like I have anything particularly cohesive to say. It seems, though, that a theme is emerging. And it’s called Giving Myself a Freaking Break. I’m not a terribly high achiever, I like a pretty small life where I don’t make high stakes decisions and no one dies if I have a bad day. But I like to think that I always had some standards. Things that made sense. Like, it’s important to put time and thought into friendships. Or, volunteering is really important and I should do it. Maybe a rule like, don’t use your kids as gophers who go get things for you just because you don’t want to get up.
When I’m running on fumes though, those standards fly out the window. My natural reaction is to use some form of willpower or adrenaline to force myself to keep going. But that willpower fled for warmer climates sometime during October. The adrenaline got all those Christmas decorations up and then seems to have decided to hibernate until spring. So I am barely keeping up with friends and have forgotten ALL the birthdays. I’m trying to meet my volunteer obligations (past me, why did you join the PTA?) but mostly only doing enough to get by. And my kids have learned how to make me tea just the way I like it.
Part of me hopes that the next few months will reverse all that but, for today at least, I’m Giving Myself A Freaking Break. I’m not sure if you all are facing the same struggle, but I’d invite you to do the same. Don’t lower your standards; take a short vacation from them. We’ll get our groove back eventually, right?
