Adulthood comes with lots of responsibilities, from pursuing our personal goals to work-life and family life as well. These are cycles of priorities seeking our attention on a daily basis, and before we realize it, getting adequate sleep and rest within the day becomes a hassle.
To be sincere, it's been very difficult to find balance juggling all these responsibilities, and most times my quality sleep and rest are tampered with. This prompt pushed me to really reflect on my sleep and rest pattern considering the way I face adulthood responsibilities.
Being a mother of three with so many roles piled up, I try to balance a lot of things daily, but yet, it has proven to be difficult to find adequate sleep for me. My day is usually filled with many activities, most of which I cannot overlook because no one will do it for me. Let's say on average, I sleep like 6 hours to 7 hours within 24 hours, but the truth is that it's not always a quality sleep. In between my sleep, there's always interruptions from the kids most nights; when the need arises, I have to wake up and attend to the demands of parenting. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I will remember an email I sent for my clients regarding my real estate job and be forced to use my phone at night to check for a response. Sometimes, I place a crypto trade before bed, and I have to be awake to monitor the market. This is adult life for you; we are always calculating how to make ends meet even when we are supposed to be getting a quality rest. It's been a hassle and a kind of busy lifestyle; I don't know when it will end.
However, it's okay to observe long hours of sleep, but is it just quantity or quality? To me, quality of sleep is what matters because it will restore our body and bring calmness to our brain for better productivity the next day.But then, there are several factors affecting my sleep quality most times. As a mom, there are times when responsibilities are just so overwhelming, and I find myself sleeping very late. It could be helping my kids to get their homework done, which sometimes takes longer; sometimes getting the next meal for the day ready at night encroaches on my sleep time. Sometimes, I am emotionally down due to one issue or the other, and sometimes the thought of my children's well-being will just occupy my mind, affecting my inability to sleep; even thoughts about my personal project can keep me active at night when I am supposed to be sleeping.
But then, earlier this year, I advised myself, seeing how the effect of the low quality of sleep took a toll on my health the previous year. Those days, I wake up almost daily with a slight headache, general body weakness, and even dizziness sometimes, and being productive becomes a struggle.
Sometimes, we may not even need any kind of medication for some distress; all we need is quality sleep to bring back our body system to function properly. No wonder the saying that sleep is a medicine.
So far, I have been gradually changing a lot of factors that limit my sleep time. Ensuring that my kids get their homework done as fast as possible without distractions, giving out some chores to people with little payment so I feel a bit relieved and finish up my duties as early as possible. Then again, I applied self-discipline; once it's my bedtime, no more scrolling through the phone to check whatever, until my alarm wakes me up by 5am. Unlike the previous year, now, I have been waking up feeling more refreshed and stronger because I am prioritizing my quality sleep over quantity, even though there are still some nights that I get distracted by the kids, but at least not work-related joining the sleep interferences.
In conclusion, there's a need not to overlook quality rest and sleep no matter the workload we face as adults. This is because sleep is vital to our physical, emotional, and mental well-being, and when we observe quality sleep within the day, it would help our brain and our general body to function efficiently and effectively the next day.
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