On Having the Same Bed-Time as a Five-Year Old
You know what I love? Sleep. I just love the shit out of it! Dreaming, getting all snuggled up in my blankets, reading before bed, hearing the voices in my head get louder and louder until it turns out I’ve crossed the line into the unreality of randomly firing neurons. Oh right, already mentioned dreaming.
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- Naps wherever!(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ever since I confused CrossFit and StrongMan, I’ve been hearing about the Paleo/Primal/Ancestral diet. And as an increasingly obese person, I was motivated to learn and try whatever the hell promised me that my backfat would melt away. As I read about it, it became clear that food, although important, was only a part of a lifestyle overhaul. I realize I’m treading real close to new-age-douche baggery here and will try to mediate it with pictures of cute animals sleeping.
In another post maybe I’ll go more into above-mentioned overhaul, but not today. Advice given to those who are trying to make major changes, is to focus on one thing at a time, and tweak and change it until you feel happy with yourself. This is how I ended up self-imposing an 8:30pm bedtime.
So I gotta get up at 5am. Beelzy and I are trying hard not to drown in our own filth while also eating out as infrequently as possible, and on my end, that means 5am wake ups. Simple math means I need to be asleep by 9 to ensure at least 8 hours.
I decided to try this for 25 days, and like many other things I’ve been trying lately, I think I’m mostly gonna stick to this change.
“But that leaves so little free time,” you may say. Yeah, I guess. I get home around 5, so that’s three and a half hours to… Watch TV? Stare at Facebook? Well, that’s what I used to do when I had more bullshit time to kill. Now it’s just 3.5 hours! Can’t help but take it seriously and do some reading or mess around with the guitar or something….
YOU ARE MY ZOMBIE GOD NO LONGER!!! (Photo credit: dhammza)
And of course I am less tired, more alert, and way less grumpy at the end of the work day. The nights I do stay out, the sleep debt is insignificant in comparison to how badly it affected me in the past.
Post-party naps (Photo credit: Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL))
Seemingly unrelated, my quest to become less obese has been helped by this whole lots of sleeping thing. I am literally losing more weight and quicker because I am allowing my body the rest it desires, thereby also allowing it to NOT MAKE ME INSANE. When I am tired, or sad, I tend to want to eat something. Often, it’s something that is either sweet, or salty, or packed with fat. When possible, all three, or at least one of those foods, following another of those foods, followed by another until I can eat no more. Since I now have just enough time to eat dinner, be pleased by life, and then go to bed that whole cycle is utterly moot anyway. But I generally have no need to go there, since as I mentioned, I no longer feel near-dead by 5pm, and don’t feel full of hate.
Internet tells me that this happier, saner, more reasonable being I have become is normal, albeit unheard of in the US.
So fuck conventions! And fuck sleep deprivation pride! You’ve been awake and chugging energy drinks for two days straight? Well, I sleep for at least 8 hours out of every 24, and go to bed at the same time as your preschooler! And it feels gooood!
That’s some excellent sleeping there. You’re my hero.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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