Today I want to write about sleep. Now, sleep seems like a pretty simple topic. Just get some. Done. But, of course, life is all about priorities. I'm sure we all want sleep. I want sleep. But then an opportunity comes up, and you end up doing something like driving all over Oregon, and suddenly, you're not sleeping too much for 4 or 5 days in a row, and then, things start to happen.
I think, for me, sleeping - how much to sleep, lack of sleep - is remarkably similar to alcohol. I still drink; just last night I had a couple with some friends. But there's three things I've learned about drinking: one, don't drink so much. Two, drinking is kind of like a mood enhancer; when I'm happy, it makes me happier, but when I'm down, it makes it worse. And three, and most importantly - when I'm drunk, I can't trust myself. I just can't do anything important when I'm drunk. 8 of the top 10 worst days in my life are easily traced to just drinking too much, and then trying to do something important when I'm drunk. By important I mean something like having a discussion with my girlfriend, or thinking about major decisions in my life. That seems obvious, right? Don't drink and text. Any decisions you make while drunk are basically worthless. If your job seems crappy, or you think you should move to Iceland, it's important to have the self-awareness to say "this is just drunk me thinking".
Well, it turns out that, for me anyway, the same thing is true about lack of sleep. In my life, I've had a lot of days where things just didn't seem to be going very well. I felt stuck in whatever I was doing, nervous that I was doing it poorly, worried that I was forgetting something important. I would often have this vague sense that I should change everything, that I should quit my job, or my relationship, or change my apartment, or whatever. And, looking back on it, it seems clear now that a lot of that was just due to lack of sleep. Instead of rearranging everything in my apartment, what I really needed to do was take a nap. Much cheaper.
The reason this is so important is that it can waste a ton of time and turn into a vicious circle. When I'm tired, I sometimes decide that I need to do a bunch of important things, which of course means that I don't sleep, which makes me even more tired, etc. A lot of my coping mechanisms around lack of sleep make me even more tired, such as drinking caffeine instead of water, or trying to do something entertaining at night before I go to sleep, or having an iPad in bed. It's, again, similar to drinking: when you start getting drunk, there comes a point where it feels like the best idea ever is to have another drink, and you start heading down the drain. The thing is, though, even at my absolute worst, I've never gotten hammered more than two nights in a row, whereas I've been chronically unrested for as much as months at a time. And it makes everything suck: studies show that people who haven't had enough sleep eat poorly, can't drive a car, get anxious and irritable with other people, etc., etc.
So, yes: self-awareness, as always, is the answer. When I'm feeling anxious or irritable, the first question to ask is: how much sleep have I had? And if the answer is "not quite enough", then everything - everything - has to wait until I can take a nap!