“We should have remembered that the change in clocks plays havoc with your sleep pattern,” Karen mumbled from under the duvet as I got up at 4 AM. Again.
“Hmm,” I grunted, and fumbled my way around the bedroom, believing I hadn’t disturbed her.
I don’t remember the clock change playing such havoc with my internal clock before. So I looked back through my DayOne journal entries from previous years, and it turns out I’d written about my struggles with days of 4 AM starts every single year.
Today was going to be like a day of jet lag, except without the memory of a lovely holiday with family and friends somewhere warm and relaxing. That reminds me to speak to Michael and Erin about our next trip to Oz.
I digress. I’m suffering from Clock Lag.
There was little point in trying to focus on anything today. I needed small, one-off tasks to keep me active that didn’t involve brain power, operating machinery or using sharp implements.
I consulted our ‘list’, which is a bit like Mum’s dreaded Pink Book of Jobs for Mark and Andy. I scanned it for short tasks I could safely do. Cut the grass? No, that involved machinery. Put the mirror up in the hall? Definitely not. That involved drills and concentration, and I momentarily had a flashback to my last attempt to put a picture up. Put the whiteboard up in the study? Drilling again. I lost focus, or maybe I started nodding off.
I needed to find some energy, because I had agreed to do a one-to-one table tennis lesson with one of the Pewsey Pings players. This would wake me up, or completely finish me off for the day.
As I was getting changed into my table tennis gear I remembered the mantra my fitness coach, Ruthless Ruth, lived by: ‘If you’re feeling tired, go for a run!’
I was feeling tired, but I wasn’t feeling like a run. Instead I decided on a fast walk to the leisure centre, in the hope it would give me enough energy for the session.
The fast(ish) walk and the thumping music pumping through my headphones worked. I trotted into the court with a second burst of energy, although in truth it was probably the first and only burst of the day.
By 8 PM I was struggling to keep my eyes open. “You need to push through to 9:30 at least,” Karen said encouragingly, as she caught me dropping off in front of the TV.
“Hmm,” I grunted.
On the plus side, I’d got through the whole day without operating machinery or using a sharp implement.
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