This morning, I did some rare for me: I slept in.
I did not sleep well last night. My mind woke me up, I guess. I was thinking of the many young people who have reached out to my company, wanting to travel to Australia, New Zealand or the USA, and how I can’t help them—and how I don’t know when things will change.
Then I started thinking about the costs of just keeping a business going at all–when there is no reason for me to charge right now.
That led me to cataloging the clients who have paid, who are waiting ever so patiently for borders to open and visas to be issued—but who could ask me to issue refunds at any time.
I won’t go into all the other dark and scary places I can keep spiraling down into at those hours of the night. I am pretty sure I don’t have to: I bet that you, too, have a similar scenario that keeps you up at night.
When these thoughts circle around at 1:30 in the morning, my typical answer is to reach for my I-pad and dive into a book, hoping to engage myself enough to quiet the worries.
I made one concession to myself back in March, and I am sticking to it: if I lose sleep like that, I get to stay in bed a bit longer than usual. (Now, there is, of course, a limit to the time on that. When I say “sleep in”, that means I was out of bed about 6:20 AM instead of 5:15. I do have some responsibilities I can’t throw aside completely.)
I rationalize this by remembering that viruses attack when your body is less resilient. Sleep is important.
Similarly, I have added drinking orange juice every morning back into my routine, because I want the extra vitamin C. After reading about how calcium has been shown to help fight off COVID, I also make sure to drink one full glass of milk per day, too.
This is a silver lining for me, this idea of purposefully caring for myself more, to put “selfcare” above routines and to grant myself permission to sleep more.
(Just a quick question for you, too: is there anything you’d like to grant yourself permission to do? There’s likely no better time!)
