I read about sleep the other day. An article about how much more profoundly sleep impacts our health and well-being than most of us probably realize. I want to share it with you because it's something I struggle with on a daily basis, and imagine many of us do as well.
Struggle in the sense of knowing I should turn that blue computer screen off at least an hour before bed, turn it off while I eat, and not turn it on the first moment I wake up. The theory is great; practice, not so much.
There is, always, always, too much to do. Get the little one up and ready for school. Drive to school and then to see clients. Back to the office to work on deadlines, phone calls, materials, all of the back end work that goes into producing, publishing and marketing books. Off to school again to pick up my daughter, back home to make dinner, clean up, wash up, back to the computer to edit one more paragraph, tweak one more thing on that email. Suddenly it's 10pm and I like to get up at 5 to get that headstart.
I used to burn the candle at both ends, on a daily basis. I've made the decision not to do that anymore—now I get to sleep 2 hours before midnight, but I still work up until the lights go out. Somehow I'm incapable of spinning down that hard disk even after all the power lights are nice and dark. I realize, writing this, that we adults (at least those of us who love our work too much) are no different from children who have trouble transitioning from one activity to another.
It's hard to quit that email program, shut down that laptop and just wiiiiiiind down for the evening. And yet, whenever I'm on an actual vacation, I can't bring myself to turn the electronics on. I'm not in that "mode."
That helps put it all into perspective. I can do this. I can turn it off. It's a mindset.
So maybe, just maybe, we all need to go into vacation mode on a nightly basis.
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