Mornings are my Nemesis

I don't do well in the mornings. I am not a coffee person so I don't do stimulants to wake me up. I am not a friendly, happy person in the morning. I function on a very low level. If you ask me a direct question I will answer it but I will not "chat" or engage in any sort of social bonding type behaviour. I will do things that NEED to be done but I will not be happy or upbeat about it. 

Apparently I have never been a morning person even as a child, I wasn't very happy to get out of bed to go to school even at 6 years old. I could blame it on my insomnia but the weird thing is I am more cheerful if I have to get up extremely early (say 4-4:30 in the morning) than I am getting up anytime after 6 am. 

As I said earlier I don't do chatting or such things when I get up in the morning. Some people don't seem to get that. Even if I don't answer or give short curt answers. I guess you have to live with me to get that. Let me amend that last statement ...live with me and be an aware person. Most of my exes know this and my family know I am a grump in the morning. The more you force yourself on me (unless it is truly necessary) the more owly I will get. 

So unless it is something important  (like a death or some such event) or a simple question (like do you know if...) I may not answer you. 

I also do not believe in the statement, GOOD Morning (morning will suffice) or the question How are you this morning? (It is morning how do you think I feel). 

That is my rant for now...I suck at mornings!! LOL!

Self-Esteem

One thing I have learned is not to ever judge your self-worth on what other people think of you. I don't want to ever hear one of my female friends say 'I must be a good person because all these people want to date me'. That is no way to judge your self-worth. The only person who can do that is yourself. If you like/love yourself that is all that matters. If you are being the best person you can be that is all that matters. The problem comes is when we judge ourselves by how many people who want to date us or how many friends we have on Facebook/MySpace or any number of social networking pages.  That doesn't matter. So what if you have 400 acquaintances that doesn't mean squat, what do you think of yourself? What do you think of the type of person you are? If you like/love (I hesitate using love because it sounds like being vain but I am not talking about people "who love themselves" I am talking of true self-love and acceptance of who you are) then who cares about what others think. And if you feel that you don't love yourself then work on changing those things that you don't like. Self-reflection is what is needed here, you really need to understand what makes you tick to actually accept yourself and can say 'I like me".

It has taken me many years to come to a place of self-acceptance and self-love. I used to judge my self-worth on how many guys I could sleep with. But the the funny thing is I never kept them in my life because I was engaged in self-damaging behaviour. I was letting other people (guys mainly) dictate how I felt about myself. This led to a 4 year emotionally abusive relationship. I had to hit rock bottom before I could bounce back. I spent a lot of time self reflecting on why do I that and learning to like me again. 

Please do not judge yourself by what other people say it only leads to problems in the end. I you feel you are the best person you can be that is all that counts! 

Sleep

Sleep is a precious commodity and I don't ever seem to get enough. I have that dreaded thing called insomnia. If a I get 4 straight hours of sleep, I consider that a good night. I swear I have had sleep problems since I was about 6 years old. That is when we moved into a creaky old Victorian house. At this time I became a big fan of ghost stories. Now you can see how a very impressionable 6 year old mind would react living in a big creaky old house (isn't that where all ghost stories take place-- old houses or cemeteries?). This started me on the road to being a light sleeper/big worrier when it came to falling asleep and staying asleep. Nowadays it's not the the scary ghosts keeping me awake it is the usual worries: school, fieldwork and money ( aren't they all related?)

I really am envious of people who practically fall asleep when their heads hit the pillow and proceed to stay asleep all night. When my head hits the pillow it is still whirling and even though I have ways of relaxing my mind, it still takes me 25-45 mins. to fall asleep (normally). Apparently the average time to fall asleep is 15 mins. max. I guess I am far from normal. Once asleep, as I said before, 4 hours is the maximum for me to stay asleep, most nights it is 2 1/2 to 3 hours then I doze until morning (waking up often). I avoid caffeine and eating after 7pm but none of this helps. Unfortunately, insomnia my mother and my brother so it is a family 'thing'.

I am afeared that all my bad sleeping habits and strange work schedules have done some damage after all these years. 

Oh, to be able to sleep like a baby!