Wednesday, January 14, 2009

to sleep or no

Ok...so this blog is about something I've been struggling with for a while. I have mentioned it off hand to some people, but never in a serious tone. I am not really sure if I'm alone in this or if many other women think about this too.

I would love to hear your comments.

Sleeping. obviously something everyone does. Most doctors recommend for a healthy lifestyle to catch 8 hours of good zzz's a night.

My life is full of guilt, and one thing I feel incredibly guilty doing is sleep. Crazy some of you might think, but it is the God's honest truth.

Even if I am absolutely exhausted in the middle of the day, I try to hold off sleep. And an even more guility feeling of mine is that I am often jealous of those who are able to sleep in or catch a few zzz's in the middle of the day.

I have a theory as to why this might be so.

I feel responsible for a large amount of different things. Performing well in school (more extensively my research project), being available for my family and my church family, staying in contact with friends, working two jobs, keeping a clean house (not my greatest gift). With the addition of my research, I am responsible for arriving at the university at 9:00 am every morning However, out of all these things that I feel responsible for their is one particular responsibility that I often neglect: myself.

From eating healthy, to working out, to getting enough sleep, and so on and so forth, I tend to neglect my needs and wants when my other responsibilities begin to add up. And on top of neglecting them, I feel guility for doing them, thinking that there are more important things to do or to worry about. On top of these things, I often feel guilty reading for pleasure, blogging, face-booking, shopping and so on and so forth.

My entire life has become a set of chores. I never am relaxed long enough to enjoy the moment. I pencil in to the minute time with friends and sometimes regretfully, I am thinking about all the other things I have to do next rather than enjoying what I am doing.

I feel as though I need a vacation. Something to get me away from everything else in my life just for a week or even a few days. I need some R &R. A time to catch up on some good reading (anything not related to amino acids or butterflies). A time to get a few good days of sleep, eat a few good meals, a few bubble-baths and some good exercise (some hiking or kayaking would be marvelous). However, I feel as though this is not in my near future nor do I think this would change my guilty conscience. Infact, I am even worried to go on vacation; afraid that I might only be worried about what I will need to be doing rather than concentration on healing myself for what is to come.

I have research every day for the rest of the summer. Also, with working two jobs, it hard to get vacation time with both much less continue to support myself after missing work for a week. Right after my research is finished, I will be back to school for my final year of undergraduate college.

Although, I wish that the perfect answer to this struggle could have come to me while writing this blog, I am sad to say that it has not.

Although I can work on taking better care of myself, the guilt associated with shamming out on my other responsibilities still overrides me.

I am relying on God for help, and I believe he will take care during this next year of my life. However, I do feel that something must change but I am at a lost as to how to do that. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I am struggling with balance, and I am afraid of those unexpected things that might happen that would cause everything to go in shambles.

I am not sure what to do, but I am definitely looking for answers. If anyone has any I would love to hear them.

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