As If I Weren't Short on Time Already

I'm not a big fan of new year's resolutions, but one of my goals this year has been to take better care of myself. Nothing big or world-changing or even particularly challenging, but small goals - try to stay hydrated, remember to eat reasonable food at reasonable times, pay attention to my own body. So far, it's been working fairly well. However, I have recently come to the depressing realization that I need more sleep. And so I've promised myself to try to get seven hours of sleep a night.

Seven hours. My god. It sounds exorbitant and wasteful and slothful and bad. In vet school, six hours was a luxury, and one that I only really needed on weekends. But somehow now, that's just not enough. I can survive on it indefinitely, but it's not fun, and I wind up binging and sleeping through way too much of my weekends. Of course, my definition of way too much is still 'past 9am,' but it's still unbalanced.

Of course, now that I've made this promise to myself I'm immediately finding all sorts of reasons that I can't live with it. When am I going to run errands and work on projects and catch up on communications if I have to spend my every living minute sleeping? How am I supposed to have a life, and a schedule, with that much downtime? How do I keep from feeling like a lazy copout?

Maybe my sudden influx of sleep will allow me to develop superhuman powers of strength and concentration in my few remaining waking hours.....

There, That's Better

Work is finally busy again, after spending the better part of a month staring at the walls, rereading the same journal articles, and playing Bounce-The-Stuffed-Mousie with the clinic cat. Few things in this world frustrate me more than forced inactivity, and few things bring me to life more than challenging cases. I've managed to get the letters written and put together to respond to the complaint that has been plaguing me, which makes life much easier also.

I have sewing projects, and stitching projects, and translating projects, and knitting projects. I have a decent rental car. I have dinner cooking downstairs, making the house smell like comfort food. I have a new CD to listen to, and a sweetheart to curl up with while I craft. I even have enough chocolate to tide me through until the Cadbury Creme Eggs come out in force....

This is the way things should be.