Late Night Thoughts
I've recently developed a new habit of waking up in the middle of the night and being up for an hour or two. Last night was a rough one and it took me a while to fall back asleep, but as I tried - I had two thoughts which, at the time, seemed profound enough to share.
If I ever go into a coma, I just know I'm going to play an entire game of dwarf fortress and wake up from the coma and begin to cry, realizing it was all a dream.
A joke on the supposed story of a woman who had a coma and in three years lived an entire life and had a family and everything. Now, I went researching to try and find out more about this story and it could very well be an Internet hoax as I couldn't find any verifiable information this morning.
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Happiness is our survival mechanism telling us we're living.
I fell down a rabbit hole where my tired brain backtracked the happiness through the feelings that define it, such pleasure, fulfillment, and contentment, as all being things our subconscious uses to pull us in positive directions. Which, in a world of survival, is a very good thing. Part of today's problems are that that has been weaponized against us such that we can literally have too much pleasure.
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One person's month-long sleep improvement efforts
From the author's summary at the end, emphasis mine:
Above all, my biggest takeaway from the month was that my sleep will be good if I make it a priority, and that sleeping well is under my control, even if I don’t always get to choose the ideal conditions to make it happen.
I don’t plan to be obsessive about forcing an early bed time on all occasions, especially if that means missing out on opportunities to socialize with people who don’t go to bed at 9:30 p.m. But I do think my decision to cut out screen time after 9 p.m. forced me to realize how much I had been trading off sleep for entertainment of dubious value.
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I was in a very bad mood for much of yesterday. I knew I had not slept well, but I think I underestimated how much that poor night's sleep had impacted my day yesterday. After a good night's sleep I woke up feeling refreshed and in a far better mood.
Usually, I aim for 6ish hours of sleep. And I know my body struggles if it has less than 5 hours, of which yesterday was a day, but most of the struggling yesterday was mental where as most other days it is more physical tiredness. I can only attribute this difference to the inevitable march of time.
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I really, really, really need my sleep schedule to settle down. I keep waking up at god awful hours of the morning and not falling asleep again.
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Proof I didn't sleep well last night. Two quick games of chess and in both of them I hang my queen. Ugh. Today is going to be rough.
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Elwood woke me up this morning, and after taking him outside, I was feeling a bit awake. So I sat down and wrote for a bit. I'm 27k words into my current project and I just finished Part 1 of it. According to my tracking, it's roughly taken me 14.5 hrs of writing thus far. Still very rough, but am excited that I finished this part.
With my Muse satisfied for the time being, it's time for me to crawl back into bed.
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I ended up crashing and crawling into bed around 7:30 last night. I knew it was early and I was worried I'd wake up at midnight or 1 and not be able to fall asleep, but my body was just exhausted and I decided to risk it.
The gamble paid off. I quickly fell asleep and even though I did wake up once during the night, I was able to immediately fall back asleep. Nine hours and forty-ish minutes, with a sleep score of 76 from my smartwatch.
I still feel some soreness from working the event, but I feel much better rested and ready to take on the day.
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The bed looked, to me, like a scene of a crime last night. I had the worst night of sleep I've had in a very long time. Partially due to my own body's aches and pains keeping me tossing and turning. And secondly because of the soft bodyless pillows which hotels insist on using. I much prefer pillows with more substance. Between these two things I tossed and turned and woke endlessly through the night.
Needless to say, I am eager to sleep in my own bed tonight.
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Alzheimer's study points to good sleep as a possible tool to resist it
The link is to the abstract info on the academic research url. There is also an article on WSJ which discusses it, but it is similarly behind a paywall.
The core of it is that they studied the use of a sleep drug for how it affected the presence of other chemicals in the spinal fluid which correlate to Alzheimer's.
The study is far from a smoking gun, but is just another arrow that can be interpreted. The big thing is that if it proves true, then it becomes a concrete thing that people can do on their own to try and lessen risks of it. The same way that exercise is something individuals can do to resist diabetes and other similar risks, sleep could be that for dementia and other neurological issues. Neither guarantee safety, but they offer some additional benefit.
We will see how further studies result in this area, but for now - it's a good reason to try and not skimp on sleep (this is a note to myself.)
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A look at what Americans do before bed
The article highlights some very interesting trends beyond sleep, but the sleep topic is most interesting to me. Only 6.1% of Americans read before bed. I'm a reader. Katie is a TV watcher, though she does it to fall asleep to. She can't turn her brain off without the noise.
Where I can A) fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow and B) largely doesn't care about noise, though I prefer silence.
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Sleep
You know... I might not be getting enough sleep. I logged off work and went to lay down for a nap and thankfully the wife realized the time and woke me up, otherwise I might have just slept through the entire night. My body might be sending me a message...
Edit: Realized that I had forgotten to take my meds today. Whoops.
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"It Goes by the Name 'Bedtime Procrastination' and You Can Probably Guess What It Is"
I'm in this article and I don't like it. - As the meme goes.
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