Friday, January 17, 2020

SLEEP

Most of my life I fought sleep. Live to read was my motto and if that was under the covers well after midnight with a battery rigged with a wire coil and flashlight bulb, so be it. It's not like I learned anything in school anyway. One might, at this end of the spectrum of life, point to the fact that I slept through class but I wouldn't. Until chemistry, classes were pretty much useless. One could read the whole year in about a week. This didn't help much with math but then they wrote crappy math books way back then. They're much better now.

I used to try to cudgel the brain to sleep since that was what kept me up after I left the navy where I slept very well indeed. 20 hour days do that to one. I would lie awake at 0200 in San Diego and tell my brain that if we weren't asleep in 20 minutes we were going for a run. Usually my brain knew I wasn't kidding. I ran a lot back in those nights. Well, I might run down W. Grape St. to Harbor Drive but then I always slowed to a walk as I walked the length of the harbor to Tom Ham's Lighthouse on Harbor Island and back. Wouldn't want to overdo it. A five mile walk was about good enough to induce sleep.

I managed pretty well in this vein until another life changing event. That one went as well as expected, no complaints. I learned that one really can live, function rationally and get by quite well on about 3 hours of sleep per night. I knew that going in after my navy experience but it was an interesting discovery in later years that sleep is malleable.

3 comments:

capt fast said...

My issue with getting to sleep has been cured by the seventy years of practice. not even twenty hours a day duty in the military cured it. worry, stressors, pain, anxiety all adds to the brains problems that the mind is trying to resolve from the day long battle of someone somewhere trying to kill it.
today, sitting still and warm for five minutes has me head down and out.

capt fast said...

and yes, four hours sometimes five is all I need

HMS Defiant said...

All the radiators work now in the house. I find I can sit in the comfy chair at any time of day on the 3rd floor and fall asleep in under 5 minutes. Restful. Would that it worked as well when I lie down to sleep.