Sleep! I don’t get enough and it’s my next virtue – Sleep!

Sleep. It’s not really something I thought about before my new Halo app smacked me in the face with it with a poor score when it comes to my sleep pattern.

First, I think I should explain just what the heck a halo is. I hadn’t known about it before I was asked by the manager of my gym, if I would renew my membership for a year because Amazon was having a special program for a free halo, which is like Amazons answer to a Fitbit wrist, watch that tracks your heartbeat and vital stats, and a year free of their smart phone app. I figured I had nothing to lose, so in a couple of days it came in the mail.
It has been on my wrist going on three days now, and the stats that it shares with me I had no idea that it was going to do that. I wasn’t prepared for it, it has the ability to look at not only your heart rate, but your activity level throughout the day, your movement, your body, fat, yes, body fat, I won’t even go into Howard analyzes that. Just look it up online. I’m not here to share any affiliate links. This is pretty much my journal straight from the heart.
One of the things that it tracks is your sleep. Because you’re wearing it, it can tell your heart rate, the pattern, and can tell you if you are in a state of light sleep, REM, the whole works. Nothing is really paid attention to, until it warned me that I have poor sleep. I felt like I failed a test.
I work so hard I’m trying to feed my body right, working out every day like a gym rat, even meditating now. I’m trying to find peace with myself and calm my anxiety, and just become an overall better person. I never really thought of sleep, or having enough of it, recommended 7-9 hours, I just thought that I was one of those people who didn’t need to function on much rest. I was blessed.
But I’m really going to look at my sleep now and see if getting a little more, even by scheduling it during my day rather than just when it happens that I should need a nap. Like I mean regularly. If I’m sleeping a little over four hours each night, I need three hours to make up during the day somewhere. Maybe an hour and a half nap in the morning, maybe an hour and a half in the afternoon. I think I’m going to back it up a bit and just came for six. Maybe two hours sleep during the day I don’t think that’s a lot to ask for.
I couldn’t believe how I’m so aware of what goes in my mouth how am I form is on every exercise that I do, and having mental awareness building my mind to be more happy could be affected by sleep. One thing I will say is that it’s very easy for me to fall asleep in a chair. If I’m sitting focusing on something for too long, I will just all of a sudden night off. Kind of like an old uncle I guess, but I just associated it with my MS.
It would be nice to see if that goes away, and I just get more sleep.

I’m sharing some of the vitals that you shared with me on this app with you. The slopes and valleys of when I awaken during the night are pretty obvious to me. I wake up first to go to the bathroom always. My son is across the room for me asleep in his bed, but gets up about a couple hours later than that. He comes into my bed, and if I shift, he bumps me out.
I could’ve taken by the hand and leave him back to bed, because on the other side of him, there is his daddy. I know that he wants to come into bed to be close with both of us. And my son is only seven now and someday wish for these times when he doesn’t need me so much anymore. I actually consider myself pretty lucky that my son is so close to me. He’s never upset and frustrated with me that I don’t move fast enough, and when I dropped something last night on the floor he ran over to pick it up. I didn’t even ask him. How lucky am I?

So it’s pretty much a given that I’m going to let him stay in the bed with me. That means that it’s going to be an interrupted sleep and I’m willing to live with that. But that doesn’t mean that I have to figure out where to sleep in my sleep during the rest of the day, and now I’m going to make a very concentrated effort to schedule in sleep, rather than what room I’m going to tackle to plan or execute some virtue improvement.

I have been tackling my greater awareness and happiness, and no one is more responsible for that than myself. I change that. I am the only one responsible for that. Remember that, only you can make yourself happy or not. You have the choice. For me it’s going to take some planning to make myself happy, and to make myself function better throughout the day. So next week, the virtue that I will be working on is sleep. I need to improve this to see if I become a better person. I’m thinking I will.