I struggle to get up as early as I want, wearing out the snooze button on my alarm clock and then squeezing the time I have for things before leaving for work, like catching up with other people’s blogs and writing my own. Also, I often feel very tired just after lunch. Maybe that is a sign that I should move to Spain and enjoy a culture that respects the idea of an afternoon siesta. Less drastically, it could instead be due to too many nights, staying up to do just one or two more things and then having the alarm starting to disturb me before I have had enough sleep.

My reflections on that have been prompted by some of the blogs and other online resources I have been reading. Many have been reflecting on the fact that yesterday, Ash Wednesday, was the start of the Christian season of Lent; a theme picked up by one or two, like Brodie’s, has been taking something up rather than giving something up. There was also an article, that I can’t now find, which highlighted how the average amount of time people sleep in the West has declined by about an hour and a half per night over the last fifty or so years.

Putting that all together, I have decided that my discipline leading up until Easter will be to try and get more sleep; lights out by about 10:30pm most nights and, preferably, a lie-in to compensate when an activity like gigging demands a later bedtime.

Shaving an extra hour of activity off my day suggests that I may not get as much done but does that really matter? Anyway, looking back, I did promise myself a better investment in sleep over a year ago!

Are you taking on a lenten discipline? Comments welcome.