A Resolution of Rest

Every year, I utterly fail to keep my New Year's Resolution for more than a few months, despite the best of intentions and efforts.

Despite that, it never stops me from making them, or making a dedicated attempt at following through, with varying degrees of success. In my own defense, being an essential worker in Lockdown is not conducive to keeping a regular exercise schedule, nor to lowered stress levels.

My issues with sleeping stem back to childhood.

Part of it was my life-long tendency to get so absorbed in a book that I'd look up and suddenly realize that my 'one chapter before bed' had turned into several hours. Another part was my tendency to leave things until the last minute, and then stay up late finishing them.

I wouldn't know this as executive dysfuntion until my late 20s. My parents knew that I was Autistic from a young age, but it took over two decades to actually find someone willing to diagnose me as such, because I presented differently to the better-known (read: male) symptoms, and could mask well enough to pass as normal for a few hours per day.

The problem was, that was all I could do.

After six hours of enforced interaction with loud, energetic teenagers, and teachers who insisted I socialise even more during those brief, precious lunch and recess breaks instead of finding somewhere quiet to decompress, then an extra hour each way of commuting via public transport...

Once I finally got home, the most I could do was shut myself in my room for an hour or so, with a book or quiet music. I almost never managed to do any of my homework, much less complete it, because I was too burnt out to focus. Of course, I knew that I should be doing my homework, and that not doing it would only re-enforce my teachers' belief that I was lazy and unmotivated, and would probably end in detention. That only made the anxiety, and therefore the executive disfunction, worse. It was usually ten or eleven at night before I unwound enough to sleep, whether I was reading or lying in bed staring at a dark ceiling.

Thus, a lot of assignments were completed in the early morning hours the day they were due, and dark shadows became permanent fixtures beneath my eyes.

(Individualised Education Plans, where I might have been exempt from homework as long as I did the in-class work and assignments, wouldn't become a thing until after I left school, and wouldn't be accessible for people at my level of support needs until even later)

I've spent most of my working life in Aged and Disability Care; very physical work with odd hours, and having to be hyper-aware of non-verbal indicators when a patient may not be able or willing to communicate verbally. For the record, I'm terrible at reading body language unless it's really, really obvious, which makes the job even harder.

So, my adult life didn't lend itself to consistent sleeping patterns any more than my childhood did.

Recently, I've been looking into sleep research and sensory aids, largely thanks to my partner, who shares many of the same problems with sleep, burnout and executive dysfunction as I do.

I invested in a weighted blanket, and started setting alerts for when it's time to start winding down, time to put down the book or turn off the kindle, and time to sleep. I've also started setting multiple alarms to wake up in the morning, which lets me wake up slowly instead of giving me an adrenaline rush that will knock me right back out again once it wears off.

With those systems already in place for the New Year, instead of becoming discouraged by trial and error methods that may or may not work, perhaps 2020 is the year I succeed in keeping my New Year's Resolution.

We'll have to wait and see.

If you liked this story, leave a heart or a tip, and follow me on Vocal and Medium!