I find myself Clock watching most evenings lately.  I have to hope/assume it's a Winter thing, with the cold and the blah and the dark/short days, but still... it's kind of not my favourite.

Like I'll eat a sort of early dinner time and often will feel quite sleepy after that (I don't think it's a blood sugar thing, my blood sugars always test out fine) but then it's like... well damn, I can't go to bed, it's only 5:30, or 6:30 or 7:30.  I mean honestly, even 8:30 is too early for bed.  I have to be utterly exhausted (or fighting something off or sick) to Sleep through the night if I go to bed that early.  

There are some evenings where I get really tired fairly early and just keep checking the clock to see if it's late enough to go to bed yet.  (Say 10pm?)  That makes for a long, not great evening.

But I know, even before these last few years of health issues, that if I do something in the evening it takes me HOURS to wind down enough to sleep and then I'm done for the next morning.  Like years ago I got into a female acapella singing group, I was super excited to have made it!  The practices were one week-night a week from something like 7-10.  Or maybe 8-10 I don't remember the start time, just that it was a fairly "late" finish.  And then I'd get home and try to wind down and it would be sometimes 1 in the morning before I even felt anywhere near ready to try to sleep.  I didn't last long in the choir and it really did come down to the sleep disturbance, which sucks.

So let's say I had the motivation or found the motivation to DO something (other than watch endless shows) in these evenings, I'm legitimately worried I'd "wind myself up" and then lose sleep.  Even on nights when I'm not doing anything I sometimes get a second wind around bedtime and find myself missing the drained exhaustion I had earlier.

As I'm typing this I wonder if it might be worth playing around with trying to go to bed/sleep in those early evenings and maybe waking up earlier in the morning?  But my body has traditionally not loved early wakeups.  (To the extent that waking up too early to do something will often cause fairly extreme digestive upsets... pretty miserable.)

Sleep is SO important to me, especially right now/lately.  A bad night's sleep can murder the entire next day - as witnessed recently by the "too cold" night of limited sleep.

But I wonder how I might structure my quiet home evenings so that there is less clock watching because it kind of feels like I'm wasting a lot of time.

I was given a "diamond painting" kit for Christmas and I set it up to try a couple of weeks ago and then got the giggles when I realized I wasn't able to see the tiny little symbol things because it was too dark.  Well, Victoria, I hear you say, turn on more lights then!  Well, sure, yeah, but also, do you know how comfy my couch is to lay on?  Especially when I'm trying to encourage the drowsy feeling before bed?

But, yeah.  My evenings right now are long and the "watching the clock until it's late enough to go to bed and hopefully sleep" portion of them is not filling me with joy.  And yes, I do read in bed, but some nights once I get in to that bed the drowsy kicks in and it's hard to get far.  And when I try to read on my couch, well, my body seems to think it's nap time and naps + trying to sleep that night = NOPE!