Any parent knows that you can’t go straight from doing-stuff to sleep; your brain needs some veg-out stuff to just process things. (I mean, I can sleep, but something unpleasant builds up if you don’t let decompression happen)
By the time I’ve left work, done grocery shopping, made dinner, cleaned up after dinner, done laundry etc, it’s already late, and I’ve had no me-time to just decompress. (especially when chores drag out longer the more tired I get…)
And apart from that, there’s a mixture of FOMO, resentment and just clawing-for-agency that makes me rebel against the only boundary I can shift, even though I’m the one that suffers for it.
That’s very true, but there’s something so blissful about those rare days I go to bed and wake up at like 2am and just kind of consciously drift in and out of a very light sleep for 5 hours. Just awake enough to think and relax, but not enough to stress over the upcoming day and responsibilities.
I’ve studied for years and got a well paying job, I cannot just switch to something else without cutting my pay in half. But my work isn’t enjoyable, it outright sucks on most days. Going to bed early surrenders the only time of the day I can be happy and skips right to work again.
What do you think I finance my happiness and wellbeing with? Having more ‘fun’ at work does not offset the new problems like worrying about rent or food. There is no happy middleground really, I mostly enjoy things that do not pay at all.
Sure we need money, but I personally always take a job that pay less but is fulfilling over a well paid one that makes me stressful / sad. At the end we spend most of the day working, it’s a matter of health.
Yep. I could be reading a book and intending to finish the chapter I’m on and suddenly it’s 4 am and I’ve read 6 more chapters and about 100 pages to go so I might as well finish it. Also applies to watching a show or playing a game.
I’m typing this while waiting for my 3.9 years old to fall asleep (she was up extra late today) Then it’s time to get her 12 year old brother to bed. I can hear their mom wrangling the 9 and 10 year old brothers through the evening routine right now.
Hyperfixation on random topics. The other day I was so invested in the history of mobile phones that I stayed up until 2:30am by accident while researching useless info.
But in general my brain is dumb and does some dumb stuff.
The other night I wanted a nice cup of earl grey lavender tea to help me relax because I couldn’t fall asleep. Problem being was we had ran out of loose leaf tea bags. I dug out the small box of tea strainers we have collected over the year only to find out one hadn’t been properly cleaned and was slightly moldy. Others were surface rusted or tarnished.
My sleep deprived brain decided that the best decision was to pull out the dental picks, dremel tool, and other cleaning picks to get these tea strainers in tip top shape.
This is how my wife found me sitting on a bar stool hunched over the kitchen sink deep cleaning tea strainers at 3:30 in the morning.
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