So for a self-proclaimed non-morning person, I’ve discovered that mornings are actually key to me functioning during the day, especially in the winter. I’ve discovered that I need a certain amount of daylight, about 9 hours in order to feel like my day is balanced, otherwise I get weird feeling, fuzzy-headed, and lethargic.

In the summer, this is easy to do even if I sleep until 10 am as it stays light well past 7 o’clock, but as we head toward the shortest day of the year now, and especially this week after daylight savings, I need to wake up by 7:30 in order to feel like I’ve had a full day.

Call me weird, but I have a feeling that more of us are more influence by the seasons then we’d like to admit and weren’t really meant to live on arbitrary schedules run by office hours and alarm clocks.

Pregnancy has had the effect of showing me exactly where my weaknesses are in staying balanced and maintaining good levels of margin because if I don’t, I end up wiped out and unproductive because I keep nodding off, or I end up with a migraine because I haven’t been paying close enough attention to my body’s needs and rhythm’s and considering that blood sugar seems to be one of my triggers and blood sugar is wonky during pregnancy anyway, is it any wonder that I seem to be getting more of them? Or maybe it’s just pregnancy hormones at work as hormones have affected migraines in the past as well.

Moral of the story is I guess that I can’t not make time for yoga, morning pages, blogging, and other things that feed my soul and make me feel like I’ve had time for me. Otherwise, I end up trying to work, resenting work, then taking “breaks” to read blogs or something, and while fun at times, I usually end up getting sucked in and then spending too much time in the name of doing something for myself and yet at the end, I only feel more stressed and behind and like I’d rather have been doing something else, like design for myself, or yoga, or something.

So I right this mainly for myself, but also for you, but mainly for me cause I need to hear it, but it’s for you too, if you know what I mean 😉

Make time to do something for yourself today, I give you permission! If you hold off all “treats” until you’ve caught up (I no longer believe in catching up, more on this later… maybe… if I feel like it will be good for me to write 😛 ), then all you do is end up splurging on something that eats up too much time.

Sort of like watching your weight and food intake… Planned desserts, especially with friends or an intentional treat by yourself (am writing this from Panera, where I decided a chocolate croissant was in order along with my sensible soup and salad lunch) every so often keep you from eating the entire stash of halloween candy all by yourself because you suddenly felt first deprived and then guilty… why do we do this to ourselves?

So go on and join me in resolving to not only treat ourselves better, but to short circuit the deprivation guilt cycle that’s all too easy to fall into.  Yes? I mean, I can’t be the only one out there, right?

And when in doubt, take a lesson from my dog and cat and sleep. Unless that’s all you want to do and you’re not pregnant, in which case, you might need some help… just saying…