Written in My Sleep

So maybe health and well-being are overrated?  

The latest wrinkle in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) vein is Joseph Bates' book, The Nighttime Novelist:  Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time.  What spare time, you may well ask?  As I am asking.

As you might have guessed from the title--really, it's not hard, since the word "nighttime" is right there after "the"--Mr. Bates, in fact, has in mind that same part of the day that Gretchen Rubin [The Happiness Project] tells us we should spend comatose, if we want to be happy; that Dr. Andrew Weil advises we pass unconscious in order to be healthier and more energetic; that doctors at the Mayo Clinic recommend we devote to dreaming in order to improve blood pressure.

But Bates is more concerned with our artistic output.  He holds up as exemplars those "famous authors who held day jobs and then did their best work by night."  He intended to begin his book by mentioning 

Franz Kafka, who spent his days at a cramped desk at Workers Accident Insurance Institute of Prague and his nights hunched over his writing desk at home, making stories and novels so fantastic and strange it would be necessary to coin a term, Kafkaesque, to describe them[;]

and to go on to name

William Carlos Williams (practicing physician) or Joseph Heller (advertising) or Toni Morrison (publishing). . . . [and to] bring up stories, by now well known, of authors currently making more-than-comfortable livings who began by stealing time to write:  Stephen King, for example, who taught high school English, or John Grisham, who worked as an attorney, or J. K. Rowling, who, as the story goes, was actually fired from her job and was on welfare when she began writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.  For a bit of comic relief, I'd bring up William Faulkner's stint as a postmaster ... comic because I find it difficult to believe any mail was actually delivered.

But, he says, his list grew too long to consider these individuals anamolous.  

The truth is, there are only a handful of writers working who make their living solely by their fiction.  Most are people who put in long days, have families to care for or responsibilities to meet, work hard to make the bills, could probably use a rest, and who nevertheless feel compelled, after all is said and done, to sit by themselves and write stories.  These Nighttime Novelists publish the majority of books on the shelves.

To be fair, Bates concedes that this "spare time" can also be found by getting up early, and by writing on weekends.  But in either case, it's still coming out of the rest we are constantly being reminded is essential to our general welfare. 

Another writer who prescribes midnight oil burning is Jonathan Manor, guest blogger on Jeff Goins Writer.  (Goins introduces Manor as "obnoxious, insecure, and above all else, awesome."  Maybe he'd have a better personality if he got a little more sleep?)

Manor's guest post is entitled "Why You Should Be Writing at Night."  In it, he tells us that

Good writers write at night, because it’s devoid of distraction, there’s nothing else left to do in the day, there’s no one else to hurry to. It’s simply just you being yourself and pouring out the emotions that you’ve gathered from your day time experience and using that creativity to create something beautiful and interesting.

I, personally, designate a time to write “good” pages between the hours of 10:30pm to 3:00am.

Manor doesn't advise destroying one's health.

Getting to bed by 3:00am gives me the opportunity for a healthy night’s sleep where I could wake up at 10am and get to work by noon. Sleep is important, never skip out on sleep, meals, and play time.

He personally has a minimum wage part-time job in an interior decoration store, which accommodates his nocturnal creativity. 

It does seem sometimes like the only way I’m going to get more writing done is to take the time from sleep, as these gentlemen suggest.  But since lack of sleep can lead to depression, exaccerbate my high blood pressure, or trigger anxiety, that's a problematic solution.  And my day jobs involve meeting with clients at their convenience, learning and utilizing complex new technology, and caring for small children and putting up with big ones.  I need my wits about me, and my work schedule is unpredictable and not especially flexible.

I suppose it doesn’t make sense for me to keep trying to cram more stuff into my days. But if something’s got to give, maybe it shouldn’t be sleep. 

For tonight, I'm already up past my bedtime.  My husband is next to me asleep.  I need to be done with this post.  I will pay for this in the morning as I struggle to make an early meeting.  

Time now for my "medicinal" glass of wine, and the couple of pages of Proust I can finish before I conk out.

Proust, "most of [whose] writing was done in bed, at night, in a cork lined room, surrounded by the apparatus of the invalid."  Maybe he could have used more sleep?  And a bit more paragraphing.

Blogging on Borrowed Time

Way too much late-night blogging lately. 

Blame it on the NBA, and my family's practice of watching games together.  Blame it on the project I tried to dodge but got sucked into at the eleventh hour.  Blame it on some overlapping extra duty in my extended family.  On ramping up triathlon training.  On the season from hell in Wisconsin politics with no end in sight.  On the devil making me do it.   On. . .

Right now, I should be in bed, unwinding toward sleep in these last minutes of May 26th.  I will need the restorative power of slumber before tackling another crowded day tomorrow.  

But I'm thinking about the pattern that's forming, taking me away earlier and earlier in the day, for more hours, and filling my evenings with multitasking.  And I want it to change.

Or at least I think I do.  Because if I really want it to change, wouldn't I just change it?

Done for the Week: Still Marching

We're still at it in Wisconsin.  Week 5 and counting.  And anticipating counting for a long time to come.

This past week saw our legislature ram through a "non-fiscal" version of our Governor's proposed budget "repair" bill, which will have devastating impacts and multitudinous ripples throughout our state. Effects will officially begin to be felt as soon as our State's Secretary of State can be forced to publish it in the state's newspaper of record.  Already unprecedented numbers of public employees are rushing to retire before the law takes effect, seeking to abandon the sinking ship.  Lawsuits and investigations are multiplying, as every avenue is tried to block this package of measures, which will effectively neuter collective bargaining by state employees, cripple if not finish off public unions, undercut the Democratic party in this key state, put health care for the uninsured and medically underserved under the control of the executive branch of state government, and allow no-bid contracts for sale or lease of state-owned power plants by state administrators--among other distressing effects.

The process of passage of this bill was not a pretty sight.  It featured a Governor-orchestrated sneak attack which substituted a bill stripped of the fiscal items that would require a quorum--that quorum made impossible by the absence of 14 Democratic Senators.  In less than two hours, the bill had been announced, shoved through an abbreviated conference committee section over the vociferous objections of the Assembly minority leader, and passed by the Senate, too late to hit the evening news.  The Senate had voted unanimously not to print or read the bill before voting on it.  Only one Republican senator voted against it.  After it was passed, these trigger-happy Senators were escorted by police from the capitol building. 

The next day, the Assembly voted on the bill, in a similarly harried fashion.  Some Democratic representatives had to use windows to get into the building in order to vote, after being refused entrance by police attempting to keep people out.  Debate was cut short.  As it turned out, the no-bid contract feature was back in the Assembly version, having been omitted from the Senate version (who knew?  who could have found out, given the lack of a printed bill?).  This item was particularly abhorrent to those who were wise to the cronyism involved, and the fact that Koch industries already had job ads out for positions running these soon-to-be sold off state assets.

Needless to say, actions continue at fever pitch.

I keep hearing that we're going to be trading in our rally signs for clipboards, hitting the streets in recall efforts and focusing on key elections coming up on April 5.  And I keep answering the phone, and receiving calls to action in ongoing rallies. 

I continue to try to tend to my own life, with variable success. 

Done for the Week:  Mar. 7-Mar. 13

1. Continued off-season race training, still challenged by state of political chaos in Wisconsin; biked once (supplemented by lots of walking in demonstrations)
2. Finished The Return Journey, by Maeve Binchy
3. Gave significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit; major I.T. contribution 
4. Gave 1-1/2 days to facilitating interviews for organizer position
5. Worked my two part-time jobs
6. Published 5 blog posts
7. Meditated 4 times
8. Got my husband to the gym with me once
9. Attended meeting of committee to hire new organizer, and convened subcommittee to finalize interview questions
10. Had a movie date with my husband; saw The Adjustment Bureau
11. Watched our 2 teams play 2 basketball games, with my son and my husband
12. Attended 5 rallies, 4 locally and 1 in Madison--including two "homecoming" events for Fab 14 Senators; rubbed elbows with Jesse Jackson and Susan Sarandon
13. Played several games of chess with my son--lost all
14. Attended 1 yoga class
15. Had long breakfast with friend
16. Spent way too much time online, following unprecedented political events in my state, "working" Facebook, Twitter, and political sites, and updating my organization's website daily to reflect minute-by-minute scheduling 
17. Took one daytime nap, and got to bed "early" twice

Again, I'm going to say that rest and recreation--in red, above--were the most important items of business this past week.  A friend of mine remarked when I met up with her in Madison on Saturday, describing her reaction on opening her empty refrigerator, "You can't fight a war on an empty stomach."  And I can't stay in the battle without adequate sleep, and occasional refreshing diversion.


And again, I had a hard time keeping meditation in my sights, though my focus goal for the week was "to meditate daily, no matter what." 

Next week's focus goal--for the third, "charmed" time, I hope--will be to meditate daily, no matter what.

Done for the Week: Life in the Midst of Change

This is the beginning of Week 4 of the movement in Wisconsin to resist implementation of the new conservative agenda; to turn back the effort to crush organized labor and dismantle the social safety net for our most vulnerable citizens.  Again, not much time for everyday matters.

Here's what I got accomplished, somehow.

Done for the Week:  Feb. 28-Mar. 6

1. Continued off-season race training, continuing to be distracted by earth continuing to shift beneath my feet in Wisconsin; biked once, ran once (supplemented by lots of walking in demonstrations)
2. Finished The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, by Rebecca Wells
3. Gave significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit; major I.T. contribution
4. Worked my two part-time jobs
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Meditated 4 times
7. Got my husband and one son to the gym with me, once each
8. Attended meeting of committee to hire new organizer, and convened subcommittee to finalize interview questions
9. Met with UU Coming of Age mentee
10. Had a lunch date with my husband
11. Watched our 2 teams play 2 basketball games, with my son and my husband
12. Attended 2 demonstrations, 1 locally, and 1 in Madison; two large local rallies; and one breakfast with Jesse Jackson
13. Attended two yoga classes
14. Spent way too much time online, following political uprising in my state, "working" Facebook, Twitter, and political sites, and updating my organization's website to reflect on-the-ground scheduling 
15. Took one daytime nap, and got to bed "early" twice

Because we are going to be engaged in this project of democracy for the foreseeable future, I believe that the most important thing I did last week was to recognize my fatigue level, and to begin to address it with more rest. 


I did not do as well with my focus goal for the week, which was "to meditate daily, no matter what."  I continue to struggle with making time for meditation.  Applying last week's wisdom, I want to acknowledge my progress, however.  This week's number is one better than last week's.

Next week's focus goal--again--will be to meditate daily, no matter what. 

Resting Up

I've written about sleep before.  Last summer, sleep became something of an obsession, as a change in medication temporarily halted my nightly sojourns in the land of nod.  That state of insomnia in extremis lasted nearly two weeks.  Sleep has been mostly a nonissue since then.

I am once again being reminded of its importance.  Unlike last summer, I am not experiencing difficulty falling or staying asleep.  I am having a hard time making time for sleep.

My days are passing in a blur.  An already crowded agenda is being pressured to accommodate an epic political battle and a preschooler's schedule-altering sniffles.  My evenings are spent working.  My blog posts are being written when I'd rather be in bed.

Earlier this week, I wrote that

As this goes on, we will have to learn to live in and outside of our ordinary realities.  We have a long fight ahead of us. 

We are at two and a half weeks and counting in our fight for the soul of our state; and for the survival of our citizens and the patchy safety net that has protected us from the worst that a failing economy has thrown at us.  It is time to start pacing ourselves.

I am going to start with getting better sleep.

Buenos noches.

Snooze, You Lose

This morning started 37 minutes later than planned.  All because of that alluring little button on my alarm clock.  You know the one.  Apparently, many of us have a love/hate relationship with the little devil.  

Some refer to it as an addiction, as in this clever little ad for Ugly Mug Coffee.  (And, by the way, you can see several other arch gems from Ugly Mug's campaign, slamming morning and pushing caffeine as the solution, at The Inspiration Room.  They're worth a look.)  


The t-shirt shown here also illustrates this approach, with its not too subtle gambling allusion.

People younger than I, including my daughter, are members of a cohort some have dubbed "the snooze button generation."  They even have their own website. 

Fifteen minutes of extensive research conducted on the internet just now revealed that we have Lew Wallace, long-gone Territorial Governor of New Mexico, Civil War Union General, and author of Ben Hur, to thank for the snooze button.  Wallace inspired this contribution to wocka.com's collection of user submitted jokes:

I want to kick the guy who invented the snooze button...then five minutes later, I'll kick him again.

Wallace is vilified on the self-identified Alarm Clock Blog at onlineclock.net, in a post entitled "The History of Snooze Clocks, and Why They Are Evil." 

But really, is it all his fault?  Might we want to take a modicum of responsibility for continuing to, like Skinner's pigeons, hammer away at that tiny key?  

I uncovered two avenues to change, in my cursory discovery process, in case you are persuaded that, as a very informative New York Times article by Monica Heaner puts it, [the] "Snooze Alarm Takes Its Toll on a Nation."

One is this 8 "step" program outlined in WikiHow's article on "How to Stop Hitting the Snooze Button."

1. Set a timer so that a bright light turns on simultaneously with your alarm. When the light hits your face, you'll be less likely to fall asleep, even if you keep your eyes closed.
2. Consider setting an outdoor-rated timer which turns a space heater on in your bedroom, for about an hour before you want to wake up. Waking up to temperature stimulus is much gentler on your neurovascular system, and you may find that you'll even want to bounce out of bed and start your day under extra-warm conditions.
3. If you drink coffee, get a coffee pot with a timer. Prepare it before going to bed, set it for 30 minutes before your alarm and not only will your coffee be ready when you get up, the smell of the freshly brewed coffee may help you to get out of bed.
4. Put your alarm clock on the other side of the room. You have no choice but to answer it, and before you know it, you will be out of your bed. Works best if you share your home with others so you must answer to avoid annoying them.
5. Set a second alarm on your cell phone, computer, another alarm clock, or whatever you can hear from wherever you need to put it.  Place the other alarm by your coffee pot, in the bathroom, downstairs, in the hall, or whatever works in your home.  Then set it for 5 minutes after the first alarm on your regular alarm clock.  When you wake up, you will know that you need to go and shut off the second alarm, before it also goes off.
6. If all else fails, lock the alarm clock in a box with a combination lock and attach the internal clock speaker to an external stereo speaker. That way you’ll have to turn on the light and work out the combination before you can turn it off.
7. Consider super gluing your snooze button in order to make it impossible to use. Be careful not to destroy your alarm clock though! (May have unintended effect of encouraging use of the button that completely turns off the alarm)
8. Setting your alarm for the last possible second before you have to scramble to get to work (or whatever) can help break the snooze habit.

The other change approach involves a more elaborate technological fix, developed by MIT's media lab.  According to Squidoo, it works like this:

when a sleeper presses the snooze, the clock retracts into hiding. . . thus making the sleeper wake up and look for the clock to stop the next alarm.  

I'm not sure if this is the same device, also referred to by Squido, being marketed as "Clocky Alarm Clock on Wheels," which is described this way at Amazon:  

A great alternative to the average screaming wakeup call, the Clocky alarm clock from the folks at Nanda Home Inc. combines customizable snooze and playful mobility to get you out of bed on time. Built on wheels, the little unit emits an R2D2-style beeping pattern whenever you set it to first sound off. Tailor the snooze feature for between 0 and 9 minutes, after which Clocky will beep again, roll off the nightstand, and start scooting out of reach. To turn it off, the reluctant riser has to get out of bed and chase it down, improving the odds of then staying awake. Sturdily built with a cute chunky shape, Clocky can survive a drop of up to 3 feet, travels on low carpet or hard flooring, and includes a backlit night display for easy reading. The wheel feature can also be disabled, if desired.  [emphasis mine]

I suppose those of us truly set on clinging to sleep could still return to slumber after such a workout, but at least we would have burned a few calories in the process.  

My real concern, though, is for the tendency, which I admit to, that has us hitting various snooze buttons on life, trying to delay the inevitable, or even the presumably desired changes and commitments.  Not sure what to invent for that, but I'll take that up later.  When I'm ready.

Procrastinating 101: Zzzzzz

Luckily, I can count way higher than this!

My husband broke into my early a.m. stupor this morning with his offer to buy me an iPhone app.  Mind you, I don't have an iPhone, but he does.  And he revels in the almost daily opportunities to enhance his life (again!) with "the perfect app" for one of life's persistent problems.


The handy little gadget he thought would light my fire today is called Sleep Cycle.  I found its description (app-tly) at a site called Gizmos for Geeks (Motto:  Whoever Has the Most Toys Wins).  What does it do?

The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is a bio-alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in the lightest sleep phase.  Waking up in the lightest sleep phase feels like waking without an alarm clock - it is a natural way to wake up where you feel rested and relaxed.  Since you move differently in bed during the different phases, Sleep Cycle uses the accelerometer in your iPhone to monitor your movement to determine which sleep phase you are in.  Sleep Cycle then uses a 30 minute alarm window that ends at your set alarm time and wakes you in your lightest sleep phase. 

The gentle alarm aspect might be kind of nice, except that I'm betting that my "lightest sleep phase" probably has little to do with when I need to get up in order to be where I'm supposed to be when I'm supposed to be there.  But okay, there's the "30 minute alarm window," so that might work.  

But the scary part was where my spouse attempted to get me excited about the prospect of "graphing my sleep patterns," and worse, analyzing same.


I am extremely wary of trying to analyze, or even of paying attention to something that has given me so much trouble in the recent past.  (See "Done for the Week:  Clearing Another Hurdle;" "Putting Myself to Bed," and other sleep-related posts to gauge the depth of my obsession with somnolence.)  I guess I'm kind of superstitious about such things, but it's like I can coexist reasonably with the little sleep gremlins in my life. . . unless they know I'm looking at them.  And then, all hell breaks loose.  So thanks, but no thanks.  I don't want some device alerting these unruly guys that they've penetrated my consciousness in any way.


But why am I babbling about sleep again?  Because it is the subject of the eleventh chapter of Marshall Cook's Slow Down . . . and Get More Done, entitled "Things That Go Wrong in the Night."  Though he doesn't spell it out, Cook seems to be asserting that adequate sleep is an important element of the slowing down that he holds will cure our speed sickness, thereby increasing our ability to focus, to choose how we want to spend our time, and to have the equanimity to get done the things we care about.  


Maybe it's because the book itself was written somewhat before the recent deluge of "new information" about sleep--and before my years of parenting two small idiosyncratic sleepers.  Maybe it's because I have read a lot of such bulletins and guides and sleep improvement programs.  But I don't feel like I learned a lot that I didn't already know from this chapter.  


Of interest, though, was Cook's claim that "Everybody has a little sleep apnea" but that "For most of us, the episodes are short, infrequent and harmless."  I have long suspected that all those charming little self-suffocation machines sprouting at the bedsides of friends and family are like medical hula-hoops.  I don't know anyone who has submitted to a "sleep study" and emerged without one.  Three blocks away from my home is a retail outlet with a neon label in its window declaring it to be a "CPAP Store."  But when I drive past at the speed I generally do, it always looks to me like a sign for a "CRAP Store."  


Cook also has a number of interesting things to say about how "sleep experts" account for dreaming.  He begins with this description:

Suppose you're in the middle of a sound sleep when suddenly your entire central nervous system goes haywire.  Extreme physiological changes turn you as cold-blooded as a lizard.  Your brain blocks out all external stimuli.  If someone were to set off a bomb under your bed, you probably wouldn't even feel or hear it.  Your brain then disables your motor system by shutting a little gate at the top of your spinal column, paralyzing you so that even if you did hear the bomb, you wouldn't be able to get up and run away.  

Then your brain starts hallucinating, creating scenes ranging from fairly realistic depictions of everyday life to nonsensical dramas and horror movies.  

In such a state, in the words of sleep expert Dr. Steven Weber, "all the physiological laws get thrown out the window."  It is, Weber says, "a bizarre state of being."  

Another exotic sleep disorder?  Hardly.  We call this state "dreaming," and you enter into it three or four times a night.

No wonder I have trouble sleeping!


He passes on Dr. William Dement's view that "dreaming is your chance to go safely insane."  Dreams are variously thought to serve as 

• psychic release or safety valve
• window on the psyche
• data processing system
• random brain babble.

As to how much sleep we should be trying to get, Cook advises that this seems to be highly individual, though 

many of us in this hurry-up Age of Anxiety cheat ourselves of sleep and are probably sleep-deprived to some extent.

Our bodies, Cook says, can tell us whether we are getting too little or too much sleep.  If we are falling asleep during meetings, movies, or long drives, we might safely conclude that we could use a bit more pillow time.  (When my last two children were small, I regularly experienced falling asleep while reading aloud to them.  They would wake me and report that what I had just "read" made no sense.)  Conversely, if we are having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, we may be sleeping too much.


The part of the chapter that I found most redundant was the summary of "sleep hygiene" tips, including:

• Avoid nicotine, caffeine and alcohol
• Don't get hooked on sleeping pills
• Keep regular meal times
• Stick to regular bed and wake times, seven days a week
• Exercise
• Don't worry about it

Finally, Cook recommends "a personal sleep assessment" for those of us who are having difficulty with sleep.  In addition to the information that nifty little iPhone app would provide, we are urged to (neurotically, in my view) 

keep a sleep log for a few weeks.  Note everything you eat, drink and smoke and when you eat, drink and smoke it.  Also log any naps, planned or otherwise, and their length.  Note what time you go to bed each night.  In the morning, record how long it took you to get to sleep, how many times you awoke in the night and how long you slept. . . . [and] at the end of each twenty-four-hour cycle . . . comment on the quality of your sleep and your general sense of well-being the following day.  Also note any outside factors that may have affected sleep, such as unusual stressors at work, the shock of a phone call in the still of the night, or the introduction of two Persian kittens into your sleeping environment.

Then we should identify patterns, introduce changes gently and gradually, all the while continuing to keep our log.  


I'm tired just thinking about it.

Reentry Blues

Reentry is an incredibly disorienting time for astronauts as the body is trying to adjust from the near weightlessness of orbit to the regular ol' forces exerted on us planet-side.

I am suffering from reentry today.  My sons and I reached home around midday, after nearly 24 hours of train travel.  Our sleep had been interrupted by some late-night boarders, who encamped near us and left their door open, so that the dulcet sounds of the two urchins in their group cut through our clickety-clack dreams.  We are also coming down from seven days of New Orleans style eating.  But the biggest shock to my system is the resumption of the everyday stresses I still haven't learned to handle.


So I'm going to have to ease back in.  I have unpacked, and begun some of the straightening up that I ran out of time for before leaving.  The three of us have spread out since returning, having endured over a week of enforced, and mostly enjoyable closeness.  But now we need our space.  And our familiar things, and activities.  


Tomorrow brings a forty-eight-hour date with my favorite three-year-old.  Tonight, I am going to make like a returning astronaut and get some extra rest before planning my next mission.

Done for the Week: And Now, for My Next Trick. . .

This was a week  largely devoted to R & R--as much as could be managed with a family, a messy house, and two part-time jobs.  The "body-markings" of my triathlon race number--71--have almost completely faded, and the muscle soreness and fatigue are gone as well.  I have stopped wearing my medal everywhere, though it lives for now on my bedside table, where I can see it first and last thing each day.  


Here's the low-down on what I got done:


Done List--Week of Aug. 23-29

1. Rested
2. Recovered from triathlon, and resumed training--looking for 5K to sign up for
3. Made significant progress on repairing sleep
4. Finished Shannon, by Frank Delaney
5. Continued significant support to transitioning nonprofit organization
6. Worked my two part-time jobs
7. Published 5 blog posts
8. Meditated 3 times
9. Saw my therapist
10. Wrote 1 Gratitude Journal entry
11. Cleaned and reorganized pantry 
12. Attended 1 yoga class
13. Attended 2 prayer vigils for homicide victims
14. Took my grandson paddleboating with family for his 3rd birthday present
15. Went out with my husband for Happy Hour; continued reading aloud Elizabeth George's In the Presence of the Enemy; watched Treme episode
16. Had budgeting talk with my husband, on a bench overlooking the lake, with Starbuck's coffees in hand
17. Walked my patient dog
18. Spent a week "off-list"--no to-do list 
19. Began planning my next move

In red above is what seems to me the most important accomplishment of the week. After enduring a month of subnormal sleep--averaging somewhat less than four hours a night--I have become a bit of a sleep-Nazi.  I am refraining from my usual glass of red wine before bed; taking time-release Melatonin along with Celestial Seasoning's Sleepytime Extra tea a half hour before lying down; sleeping to "Rain on the Roof" from my grandson's Happiest Baby on the Block CD; and using a timer with a countdown feature that shuts off the light after a set time, so that I can read myself to sleep and spend most of the night in a serotonin-friendly darkened room.  I am getting between 6 and 7 hours of sleep each night, though still waking up in the middle of the night.  YouTube episodes of Becker can be counted on to lull me back to sleep, though having a laptop screen in my face is not ideal.  My sleep is a work in progress.  I look forward to the time when I can sleep through the night, sans Ted Danson and crew.

In green is the work I did figuring out how to harness the energy and lessons from the triathlon to achieving something else I care about, and identifying what that something else will be--last week's focus goal.  I am not surprised to learn that my post-tri challenges are pretty much the same as my pre-tri ones.  I still have to work on believing that I can do what seems daunting.  I still have to avoid getting sucked into other people's dramas and agendas.  And I still have to blast my way out of the torpor default that descends if I sit too long in pajamas.  


But I have decided that the next step is to establish a new schedule around my jobs' new hours, leaving time for exercise, meditation, maintenance of me and my surroundings, relationships, and writing.  It is perhaps telling that the activity at the end of that list--writing--is the one I most want to tackle, and am most afraid of.  So this week's focus goal is to develop a training plan for writing, and to spend at least 6 hours on my novel.

Maybe I should keep wearing the medal. . .

The New Age Adventures of a Triathlete Newbie-in-Waiting

I came dangerously close to not blogging at all today.  (Wow!  We dodged that bullet, hey?)  


The day began at 2:30 a.m., and then again at 4:30, when I finally gave up and left my bed.  I had been invited by a Facebook friend to attend a Shamanic Healing Ceremony at dawn, but had decided not to set the alarm for it--not really thinking of myself as the Shamanic Healing Ceremony type.   But when I was up anyway, I thought, what the heck?  In keeping with my new "curiosity" theme, and having plenty of aspects of my life in need of healing--not the least of which is my continuing propensity to awaken several times a night with visions of, no, not sugarplums, but open water swim race starts "dancing" in my head, and in my nervous system--it seemed like the thing to do at that hour.


And as it turned out, it was actually a pretty cool experience.  For one, I got to be on this beautiful stretch of secluded beach, with the waves pounding in my tired ears, while a deep coral sun appeared through partial fog.  It's been too long since I've seen the sun come up.


For another, I had the privilege of being "smudged" with sage--a ritual to purify and cleanse one of negative influences.  The man leading the ceremony--a real, actual shaman--performed this rite for each of those present, with some variations apparently dictated by the kind of energy projected by each.  In my case, and only mine, he knelt before me in the sand for some time before continuing the smoke blessing.  When I asked him later what prompted him to do that, he took some time in answering that he "felt a sadness" coming from me.  Now, I could think of this as the kind of generic thing a bogus medium says at a seance to "prove" that she/he is in legitimate contact with one's dearly departed.  Who would be getting up pre-dawn and trekking out to a deserted beach with a bunch of strangers if they didn't have "a sadness?"  But in fact, though at best I was suspending disbelief, I did feel something as this man knelt at my feet.  Kind of like he was recognizing me as some kind of high priestess of suffering, at least at the moment.  And I felt as though I were being truly seen.  


Other parts of the observance included lying with our heads toward the fire at the center of a circle drawn in the sand, like spokes of a wheel, and meditating on the surf, the sky, the sand beneath us and the trees around us; using yogic breathing to build positive energy, and to center ourselves between the earth and the sun; being led in gentle self-massage (of a type acceptable in a public area); and offering prayers for our own healing and that of a significant other.  Not so strange as I might have imagined.  All of it, in fact, within the realm of my previous experience with meditation, yoga, and women's rituals as practiced by the midwives I've known.  


A week ago, I would not have imagined that this ceremony would be a stop on along my way to Sunday's triathlon.  This evening, tired as I am, I cannot imagine having missed it.

Putting Myself to Bed

Painting by Anuraag Fulay

After several decades of giving it short shrift--and what is shrift, anyway?--I am finally learning to appreciate sleep.  


To digress, it seems the second definition of "short shrift" is the one we are used to.  The first is a bit more interesting, and more clearly relies on the meaning of the archaic word "shrift," which refers to penance and confession:
short shrift

 

–noun

1.

a brief time for confession or absolution given to acondemned prisoner before his or her execution.

2.

little attention or consideration in dealing with a person or matter: to give short shrift to an opponent's arguments.

Origin: 
1585–95  [Dictionary.com]

But back to sleep.  (Where I wish I could go!)

After a nearly two-week-long bout of three hours or less of sleep a night, I am creeping back in the direction of my "normal" sleep cycle.  And I have started to sleep without a light on, for the first time in my memory.  I am not afraid of the dark, but have been reading myself to sleep since I could read.  I generally fall asleep with the light on.  When I awaken during the night, as I often do, I resume reading.  For the past few nights, I have been using a countdown timer which shuts the light off after a predetermined interval.  I've been setting it for one hour.  Now when I awaken at 1 or 2 or 3 a.m., the room is dark, and I am finding it easier to go back to sleep.  I have also been using an mp3 of the sound of ocean waves, which loops throughout the night, and blocks out some of the noises of adolescent males roaming through the house in their own struggles with sleep.

In celebration of sleep, I present these quotes, followed by gleanings from Australia's  National Sleep Research Project's "40 Amazing Facts About Sleep."

10 Sleep Quotes

1. Many things--such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly--are done worst when we try hardest to do them. ~ C.S. Lewis 
2. Sleep is the best meditation. ~ the Dalai Lama 
3. How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the nightlight. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember. ~ Dorothy Parker 
4. Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
5. If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. ~ Dale Carnegie
6. No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap. ~ Carrie Snow
7. Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care/ The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath/ Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,/ Chief nourisher in life's feast. ~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
8. A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. ~ Irish Proverb
9. Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation. ~ Author Unknown
10. A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. ~ Charlotte Brontë

10 Interesting Facts About Sleep

1. One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.
2. REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.
3. Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.
4. Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.
5. Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.
6. Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.
7. Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.
8. Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.
9. Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.
10. The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

I also refer the reader to Gretchen Rubin's "Tips to Get Good Sleep," and her reminder that sleep is important for good health, for productivity, and, of course, for happiness.  Wow, after all this contemplation of sleep, I can't wait for bedtime.