mindsquirt

I spent the better part of yesterday doing some landscaping. The wife and I built some raised beds in front, which almost killed me. I had planned doing some mulch-spreading today, but it is raining. The wife, Cooper, and Babe are gone. My truck is full of wet mulch and really shouldn't be driven. I really have nothing to do. So today is a Lazy Sunday. It basically drives me crazy. Due to my industrious nature, and my many responsibilities (job, house, daughter, doomsday device research), I never really get to relax. I have so much to do in a small amount of time that most of my relaxing is planned, or during sleep.

That brings me to an interesting topic: sleep. I remember when I got alot of it. The first time I paid attention to sleep was probably high school. I probably went to sleep from on average at 9:30 on weeknights. I would wake up around 7, so that was about 9.5 hours a night. I also was a competitive weight lifter back then (aka powerlifter), and I think the workouts would make me want to sleep more. I didn't really put that together until much later, so I am unsure if that is why I slept so much. College was a sleep fest as well. Classes, friends, grades, were all second to proper sleepage.

Summer of my Sophomore year I took Calculus 3 (The Return of Newton). It was an early class, that I actually had to go to to get good grades in. I started drinking coffee at that time. That was basically the beginning of me getting much less sleep. But, it didn't last long, because when the fall semester started, I started back to my old ways of only attending post-10:00 classes. What a terrible way to start the day, at 10:00.

Really, I started getting much less sleep when I started my first real job as a teacher. I simply worked so hard that I had to put in a lot of long days and weekends and I could not find the time to sleep. I also drank a lot of coffee. Grad-school also showed me how much I can get done if I put in long hours. When our daughter came things went from bad to worse.

These days I probably average 7 hours and am unaffected if I get 6. the amount of times I have broken that rule this year can probably be counted on one hand. I worked so hard yesterday moving all that dirt that I'd thought I would sleep until 10:30 in the morning. I woke up today at 6:00 when my wife left for work and could not get back to sleep. There is no amount of activity or prior lack of sleep that would make me sleep 9 hours. I ran a mini marathon about 2 weeks ago and I did not take a nap that day or get extra sleep that night.

I tried napping today due to overall weakness and fatigue and just laid there. Sometimes I will be so sleepy that I am 100% sure I will fall asleep. And when I go to take a nap, I just lay there.

I think my problem is my mentality toward sleep. I basically view it as a chore, and something that detracts from the things I could be doing with my time. When I lay down for a nap, or in the morning when the sun is out, I think about all the things I should be doing, and I cannot rest.

I guess my point is, that I think it is remarkable how my sleeping habits have changed over the years. I have went from 9 to 7 hours, on average. That doesn't seem like alot, but 2 hours a day is alot of extra time. ( almost 10% of your day) I have also noticed that it takes me much less time to fall asleep now, which is great (even if I think about the murderers coming to get me). It used to take me probably 30-60 minutes to fall asleep, but now I am out in less than 5 minutes. That seems drastic but it is true. I am pretty sure that is because I only lay down to sleep when I am truly sleepy, and do not oversleep anymore.

Anyone else out there have opinions about sleep?

What a boring blog. I should have told you the story of how I became a Sea Captain for the day.