I do not know what is going on, but I’ve been sleeping for total crap this past week. At least three times lately I have woken up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back to sleep. 2 of the 3 times (including today), I never did fall back to sleep, meaning essentially a ~3:00 wake up. Great!
I feel sleepy/ tired, but yet, I lay there, just awake. Not really fresh enough to just want to get up and start my day (at 3 a.m….?), but also not sleeping. It feels annoying and frustrating and like a waste of time. And of course, I then end up feeling crummy later in the day, because I’m TIRED.
Overall I do not have “sleep issues”, but I seem to have these little spurts where this happens to me. A bunch of days with poor sleep, then it goes away and things are fine again for a long stretch.
Who knows. Sigh.
Anyway, in other news, we had our first official snowfall yesterday.
I ended up working in the sunroom all day so I could enjoy watching the snow fall. Yet another perk of WFH.
Here are a few phases of the snow:
Morning, ~7:20 a.m.:
3 p.m., from my sunroom window:
6:30 p.m., evening walk with Ivan:
It was kind of the perfect snowfall. The ground was still warm enough that we didn’t get a ton of accumulation on sidewalks/ roads really. If all the snow could always ONLY fall on the grass and trees, that’d be perfect. 😉
Quote of the Day:
You can’t cross the sea by merely standing and staring at the water. – Rabindranath Tagore
And, a bonus- I’ve shared this multiple times before, but it’s maybe my all-time favorite quote. And in honor of the first snowfall, it feels fitting to share again. I will probably continue to share it every winter. 🙂
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for cozy fleece sweatshirts.
GRATEFUL KAE 
If all the snow could always ONLY fall on the grass and trees, that’d be perfect. – THIS IS ME. I am not a fan of snow/winter, but I think it’s mostly because it’s so dang hard to get places with snow/ice.
Okay – so my sleep went like this last November and I blamed it all on the time change because several other people I knew suddenly had the same issue at the exact same time. This year I was very proactive (I was terrified I was going to have the same issue again) and took some natural sleep aids for a few nights after the change and have slept great (I also now take CBD oil 3-4 times a week, and this is also supposed to help with sleep rhythms so that could also be why I haven’t had any trouble this year). But last year was a disaster and it just snowballed for me and insomnia issues lasted for several months. It was horrible. I’d try some melatonin or Valerian Root, maybe?
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Interesting! I’ve never tried to take anything. Maybe I’ll have to look into those options. I never have trouble falling asleep at bedtime at all- it’s always between ~2:20-3:30 that I wake up and then CANNOT fall back to sleep!
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That snow is so beautiful and soooo foreign to my reality in which Cameron came home super sweaty from outdoor nighttime soccer! So weird that the landscapes are so different!
I can’t decide if I’m jealous or relieved not to have to deal with it! Maybe both 🙂
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I guess it’s like anything- pluses and minuses! On the whole I greatly enjoy experiencing multiple seasons, but the snow/cold/ice certainly can have their downsides, too. 😉
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It’s been snowing on and off for the last 3 days here, but has been warm enough that it hasn’t accumulated too much. We probably have 3-4″ on the ground. I shoveled Mon and Tues and Monday was a good workout as the snow was pretty thick and heavy! Yesterday was easy but I shoved to make sure we didn’t get nasty ice when it gets super cold this week. It is very wintery out there!
I hope your sleep issues improve. I used to suffer from awful insomnia 7 years ago. I had to do ‘adult sleep training’ meaning when I woke and didn’t fall back asleep within 5-10 minutes, I had to get up and leave the bedroom (this is what the sleep psychologist I saw told me to do). It was a total and complete pain but it worked. I hope this phase ends soon! I was up around 4 today and could not fall back asleep. My brain kept thinking about random stuff like Taylor Swift lyrics, where we will go in Fl in April, what to get Will for his birthday, etc. And then we had a really rough morning w/ Will and the coffee maker didn’t work – the water just all pooled in the filter and didn’t go into the coffee pot. I do not know what happened there! So all in all – NOT GOOD!
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Hmm I need more info! So you would get up and leave the bedroom and then what? Like go read a book in the living room? At what point would you try to go back to bed? Or did you just have to stay up??
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I wrote a whole post about it. I mention melatonin in the post but I no longer take that. I went on Ambien when I was on high doses of steroids to treat my RA when I was first dx’d and it was hard getting off of that stupid drug!
But generally you need to get out of bed and go do something until you feel sleepy again. So I would go into the guest bedroom and read until I felt like I could fall asleep again. It was not fun but it worked!! Now I rarely deal with insomnia.
Here’s the post from way back!
https://lisasyarns.blogspot.com/2015/10/sleep-training-for-adults.html
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Oh how I love the snow! And there is something so special about that first snowfall.
So sorry to hear you are in a phase of bad sleep. I go through those too and they are NOT fun. Hoping it passes soon.
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Yes! The first snowfall is always rather enchanting, isn’t it? 🙂
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The snow yesterday was so beautiful. It was an excellent first snow because it looked nice, but we didn’t have to break out the shovels!
I have been waking up at 5:30 every morning since DST with a full bladder because my body has not adjusted to the new wakeup time. This means I have to decide if I get up and deal with it (which then indicates to the cat that humans are awake upstairs and starts her crying for breakfast) or just lay there for another hour while I wait for the alarm to go off, knowing that I could have an accident at any second. Life is full of these small challenges, isn’t it? LOL.
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Sorry about the sleep disruptions they are very annoying especially if you want to function normally the next day. It happens from time to time I wonder if it’s hormonal. Never made the correlation. I find that my sleep quality correlated with screen free time before bed. If I’m in the phone until I go to bed I almost can guarantee not great sleep. If I’m at least 1 hour off the phone then I will sleep better.
Beautiful snow pic. And love the quote. Honestly we can find joy in everything.
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Those snow in the evening pictures just hit me – I know those days from my life in Germany and I got a pang of homesickness. I know exactly how the air felt and smelled like. Funny how that works…
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I don’t have sleep issues in general, but a few years ago I read somewhere that counting backwards from 300 by 3’s can help. It gives your brain something to focus on other than ‘I should be asleep!”. That’s what I do and it seems to work. Can’t hurt to try it next time!
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I feel you on the sleep issue. I usually don’t have any problems with sleep, but every now and then, I have a couple of days of insomnia and it reminds me how bad I feel for people who deal with this all the time.
I can’t believe how many people have reported snow in the last week or so… I guess it’s that time of year 😉
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Like others, I feel you on the sleep issues. My problem is, I give up and just, well, get up. Which means I then caffeinate throughout the morning in an attempt to get through my day. Lisa’s approach seems much healthier. Regardless, I hope the insomnia has eased and that you’re now sleeping well again.
And thanks for the reminders of the snow on this truly disgusting weather day. 🙂
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