[Coda]

I have an unhealthy relationship with sleep.

I know I need to get enough sleep in order to function properly. I know that if I don't get enough, I'm irritable and lose mental clarity.

I also know that I don't have a choice on what time I get up in the morning. I have to drive my son to school; there's no getting around that. And on the weekends, my cats know exactly how to wake me up to get me to feed them.

And I also know that I have a lot of responsibilities that I need to keep up with. I've got to be a parent, a husband, and an employee, and I also need to take care of myself.

I'm loaded up to the point where disruptions cause a real problem. It's fine as long as things go smoothly, but if I have a bad ADHD day, or if something breaks, or if there's extra stuff that comes up that I need to take care of, I run out of time in the day. And the first thing that gets sacrificed to balance it out is self-care.

But if I stay up late to get stuff done, that contributes to my fatigue. That means I'm more likely to struggle to get things done, which puts me farther behind, which makes me feel like I need to put even more time into catching up on things... which makes me stay up late, which makes me more fatigued...