The problem, though, is that I'm just so damned tired. I have a tendency -- a strong one -- to defer stress for later processing and a concomitant conviction that I can do the same with my need for sleep. The latter isn't true, of course. Probably the former isn't either. But the stories I tell about myself, which therapy is attuning me to perceive more directly, are often how I will set aside something I don't believe I have the resources to deal with now for a later date.
What I'm realizing now, though, as my life settles back into a somewhat normal routine after the holidays -- or at least promises to do so -- is that I've reached the point in those stories about myself when I have to "catch up" on all that sleep and stress-processing that I've deferred. Again, that's probably not possible in a literal sense. But I have exhausted the narrative possibilities for deferring exhaustion and now must pay the proverbial piper.
I'm hoping that I can make headway on a fitness regimen -- I want to begin jogging again -- that will make me more viscerally tired at night so that I don't find myself up past a reasonable bedtime staying awake out of habit. That approach has worked for me in the past. Finding time in which to do this won't be easy, I know, yet it will be worth the schedule juggling required.
