I married into a family that takes Christmas very seriously. So December is a time when a lot of things have to happen - baking, cooking, buying presents, going to see Santa so we have a picture to put on the Christmas cards which by the way need to go out no later than December 20, and so on. It's very hectic. Once upon a time, I could just get by on less sleep, but these days that's less of a solution for me. In part, I'm sure, that's because I've stopped drinking caffeine because now I get fewer migraines, but mostly I just get tired more easily.

So in an attempt to get things done, I stopped going down to the gym at 3am to run. I figured I needed every scrap of sleep I could get, so as soon as each night's tasks were done, I'd just crash and wake up (generally a bit too late.) This totally backfired. In the final three weeks of the year, I didn't run at all. And apparently, when I'm not running, I need to sleep even more. Previously, I'd become accustomed to sleeping 5-6 hours a night and feeling fine, but in the crap end of December, I slept 8-9 hours a night, and was still tired when I woke up. So basically, not taking time to run meant I had less time available to get stuff done.