As a kid, I considered sleep overrated. I am sure I am not alone in that. I would stay up late reading, talking to friends, or watching TV. It was easy to stay up past our bedtimes in our house because our mother would fall asleep around 9 pm watching the news. If she woke up, my brother and I would pretend we didn’t know what time it was.
It was easier in my teen years. I bought myself a loft bed from Ikea, I had a cell phone, and I had more will power. I would often stay up until 2 or three in the morning and fall asleep on the phone. Other nights, I would be out until one or two in the morning then come back in. It helped that everyone in my house was a sound sleeper.
I would go several days in a row clocking under five hours of sleep. I would sometimes fall asleep in class or on the bus to make up for it. But somehow, I managed.
Fast forward to my adult years, I continued with that mindset.
Sleep is a waste of time.
I would wake up early, take Igneous on walks by the beach in Santa Barbara and then head into work. I would work through lunch to clock some overtime to help fund my extravagant Santa Barbara lifestyle. As soon as the workday was over, Igneous and I would head back to the beach or another nearby dog park for another walk, sometimes with friends. Then I would head out with friends for dinner and/or drinks, sometimes staying out until 1 am before returning home, falling asleep, and starting the cycle all over again.
To be fair, I wouldn’t go out drinking every night. But I always managed to stay out or up as late as possible.
I would always say, “There are a million other better things I could do with my time than sleeping.”
I wasn’t writing at the time and I was reading much less often. The only thing I could really remember would be some of my nights out with friends and rock climbing but not nearly enough to account for how little sleep I got.
I would get an average of six hours of sleep.
I know I am not alone in this. How many hours of sleep do you get a night?
Then you grow up
People use to tell me I would feel differently when I was older. They said the same thing about alcohol, weight gain, and foods I would eat. They had no idea what they were talking about.
Or did they?
Our bodies mess with us. They convince us for the first twenty to twenty-five years of our lives that they will work one way then just change their mind overnight.
WTF?
Now, I am tired if I don’t get a full 8 hours. And if I go more than one day without a full 8 hours, I feel like I have been hit by a truck. It takes me weeks to get back on track and feel normal again. Weeks may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it feels like it.
There is this weird pattern where we, societally, do not prioritize our health. We prioritize work, pleasure, leisure, and attention. Sleep, exercise, eating healthy, and our mental health can come after all of that. It is so strange to me. These are the things that allow us to have a higher quality of life despite our circumstances, but we are encouraged to prioritize everything else over them and use our leftover or free time to think about them.
What if instead, we set strict times where we went to sleep and woke up and had to fit everything else around those times?
My procrastination would get the best of me, and I wouldn’t get everything done.
But what if I just messed up and didn’t get everything done, and whatever I did not finish resulted in some form of punishment. Would I learn for next time?
Because feeling miserable after not sleeping has not convinced me I need to be more strict about my sleep schedule.
Just the other day, I stayed up until 4 am reading a new book. I am too old (and too tired) to be doing that. The next day, there was a lot of wind, which terrifies Igneous. Rather than making up for my lack of sleep, I was fighting my 50-pound dog off of my head. As she started calming down because I just moved the pillow in front of her and finally tried to fall asleep, my mother-in-law called Jesse because she was worried about his brother who had not made it home or called, and it was two in the morning. So then Jesse worried.
It turns out his brother is the only person I know who prioritizes sleep. He found out he had to work and be up early the next day. He went to sleep without telling anyone he would not be returning to Milan. When they called him repeatedly to find out if he was okay, he turned off his phone to make sure he got his sleep.
The three of us did not sleep that night—and having this two days in a row means I am still paying the price three days later, but he slept fine.