I hate waking in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep or not being able to fall asleep once I lay down.  I feel shortchanged all the next day.  I’m not one of those people who can sleep easily during the day. No matter how silly it may seem I feel I have lost something I will never get back when I sleep during daylight hours.

If only I could sleep anywhere, anytime!

Occasionally, the chaos of the day causes my brain to kick into overdrive just when it should be shutting down to recharge.  Going to bed at my normal time, I usually fall asleep relatively quickly.  On the nights that restless thoughts worm their way into my consciousness, I wake up after just an hour or so.  Once I’m awake, I toss and turn and try anxiously to fall back asleep.

Recently, after having fallen asleep at 10:00 PM, I woke up at 2:30 AM.  Tossing and turning for over half an hour, I finally gave up and got out of bed.  I was wide awake!  Since I had to be at work at 7:00 AM I decided to give up and get out of bed.

It turned into an amazing experience!  I sat down and worked on some writing tasks, washed a load of clothes, ran the dishwasher, polished my nails….. Well I did a lot of things I would never have had time to do if I had gotten up at my normal 5:00 AM.

Incredibly I made it through the day smiling and alert!  I was still refreshingly awake at 7:00 PM when I got home.

One of my favorite things is an unexpected “Gift of Time”.  A meeting unexpectedly cancelled, or an obligation that changes and frees my time.  That’s what I call a “Gift of Time”.

Although, I doubt getting up in the middle of the night on a work day is anything that I should do on a regular basis, for that one day, it was an absolutely  wonderful “Gift of Time”!