I’m so tired, I’m shaking.

I want sleep so bad that I feel like crying. My arms and legs are heavy and slow. My eyes are slow and gritty. There’s not enough Visine in the world for this. Getting myself out of bed was like a physical pain. At least there’s no migraine, which this kind of thing can often trigger.

It’s been a long week with work, and it’s Tuesday, and there’s my elderkitty’s health, and there’s life, and there’s learning to live alone, and there’s learning to comfort myself instead of just taking care of other people, and I’m tired.

T-I-R-E-D.

And now my Maggie-cat has jumped onto my shoulder from behind me, from the bed. She’s old, and doesn’t feel good, and wants to be held. So I’m holding her soft fur, and her warm kitty body, and I’m listening to her comforting purr, and that makes me want sleep even more.

Also, it means typing one-handed.

Can I just crawl back into my nice beautiful warm bed? I could curl up with Maggie Mayhem purring in my arm, like we’ve done almost every night for 18 years, and we could both go back to sleep for another 10 minutes before I have to leave for work. Ten more minutes. When I have ten minutes left of my lunch break, it seems like nothing. This morning it seems like a sleepy lifetime.

I’m tired, so that’s why I’m not writing this blog entry, today.

At night I’ve been setting an alarm to encourage me to go to bed at a good time. Each night, all the chores I need to do take longer than I think that they will, or should. Suddenly single after fourteen years, with three cats, one dog, a full-time job… don’t I deserve a little extra sleep? It’s a lot of work maintaining everything. Is it really that important that it get up and post this? It’s not like anyone would know. It’s not a paid gig. I’m not changing the world with it.

I’m not changing the world. I’m changing myself. I’m changing my priorities, and teaching myself to see my own time as having value and use when I take it for myself. My time is not only useful when I use it to support other people. It is not only valuable when I’m trading it for money.

This month is about noticing my excuses, and walking through them. It’s about learning how to take care of myself, and about learning what new dreams I want to dream. It’s about waking up. It’s not about going back to sleep.

Are you still with me this morning, writing, fellow Write 31 Day-ers? Leave a comment, and I’ll drop by your blog to say hello. Let’s bolster each other, and limp across the finish line with our arms around each other’s shoulders.

May we all sleep well, tonight, when the day is done.

This blog has been taken over by the 2018 Write 31 Days challenge. Here’s the sweet, sweet index of all my posts of nope.