Sleep
Sleep is a funny thing. If it weren’t so universal, it’s hard to think that anyone could be convinced it was a beneficial process for survival. Excuse me a moment while I fall unconscious for several hours. Do please avoid harming me. It wouldn’t be very polite, you know?
Even beyond that, a great deal of our time seems to be wasted either trying to get to sleep, avoiding sleeping, or recovering from being asleep. Right about now is getting to be the point where I really should sleep, in order to be waking up tomorrow at the time I intend on leaving. However, if I were to try to sleep now, I would not fall asleep. I would in fact lie in bed for several hours, possibly being quite comfortable. But in the goal of sleep, it would be a waste.
I am told the best way to deal with insomnia is to ignore it. If you wake up at the time you need to, your body will get tired when it needs to. So long as you never give up on forcing it into the 24 hour block, you’re guaranteed to convince it. Or die, I suppose.
The problem with taking insomnia advice, is I’ve never considered myself to have it. So long as I’m able to wake up when I please, I never have problems sleeping. It might happen 6-12 hours later than it should, and last longer than would technically be allowed if it were to be repeated, but I sleep, I wake rested. All’s well in the world.
Then again, technically of course, that advice is what winds up counting. The times that I truly am forced to wake up, regardless of reason, are the times that dictate when I am able to sleep. While waking up is made significantly more difficult by staying up late, with enough motivation it can always be overcome. You cannot force sleep. Trying will only waste your time, and make you comfortable with lying in bed awake.
That’s the theory anyway. I for one am horribly guilty of lying in bed for significant periods, rather than completely waking up. Often I will find myself hitting snooze and taking 5-15 minute naps on the order of an hour or more. This is a horrible waste of resources however, and I shall now make the resolution to only be in bed when I am genuinely in need of sleep, and to get out of bed as soon as sleep is no more.
We’ll see how that works out.
