sleep

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz

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There is a caste system when it comes to sleep. Yes. Sleep. There were four people on a television station discussing Early Risers and how they look down on non-early risers. They also discussed the truthfulness of those who say they work and enjoy each day with less than six hours sleep.

My first instinct was to change the channel after muttering a polite “Who cares?”, but I stayed and listened.

Listening is almost never a bad thing, by the way. Try it.

The show was a relatively innocuous affair, and it appeared the criticism of sleeping habits was good-natured and not seasoned with malice. What I saw and heard was people with the power to communicate to a mass audience airing a particular grievance: “I want to sleep as late as I like, get up when ever I like, and not be criticized about it.” The old saying about the early birds and worms was snickered at and not just discarded but held to ridicule as inaccurate and possibly discriminatory. Most panelists wanted a flexible work schedule, presumably to show up any time they wanted.

One nice man with an English accent, remarked that we, as humans, are genetically programmed for a certain type, term, and depth of sleep. And there are only a few (it might have been 17) genetic “types” of sleepers in this world of about 8 Billion people. The four panel participants were then informed we will all be unhappy if our real life sleep schedule does not match up with our genetic “make-up” schedule

Ah, the things rich people worry about…

Or should it be semi-rich? The panel learned there is a “sweet spot” in sleep data and the very rich often suffer from bad sleep. I didn’t get the details–again–about a sleep study showing poor people sleep the worst, but the next group to suffer “bad sleep” are the “very rich.” So if you have no money, you have trouble closing your eyes and getting the sleep you need. And if you are very rich you have trouble closing your eyes and getting the sleep you need. But if you have a Goldilocks amount of money, well, that’s just great.

There’s no problem at all with America spending money and time on finding answers to our population’s needs. But…is how well we sleep, one of them? We tend to think of American Wealth as a bottomless bucket from which we can draw flows of money anytime, and that’s partly true, but a dollar spent on Subject A is a dollar not spent on any other subject.

If you sleep much, yourself, you probably do the best you can to get to bed on time, close your eyes, and stay slumbering for as much of the night as possible. So how is it going? How much of what happens to you after you go to bed can you actually control? If a “Sleep Study” published a detailed report of how people sleep in a research setting, would it make any difference to you? Would you follow the study’s recommendations? Do you have kids? A dog?

I do not sleep the same way at age 74 as I did at 18. Is there a breakdown of age groups in the study? Did my “genetic make up” change? Am I happier now or back at age 18? Ha.

Ah, crap. I’m doing the very thing this essay is about: wasting time. And money.

When I have trouble sleeping, one of the things I do is thank God for my bed, my air-conditioning, the wonderful color tv, the end of cancer in my world, and…you get the point. There are news reports about homeless people. How well do they sleep? Other reports show people sleeping 15 to one room in poor countries, even sleeping on the floor, the dirt floor.

Sometimes knowing people live that way keeps me up at night, mainly worrying it might be me someday.

There is no bottom in the bucket of serious problems in this world, but there are very few humans willing to tackle those problems.

Maybe if everyone just got a good night’s sleep…

BTW: it isn’t hypocritical to waste time writing about wasting time, is it? What about you reading it?*

*The shows panelists learned it’s okay to read on your phone while going to bed as long as you do it standing up.

What Difference Does It Make?

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Forget the “it” in the title. We already rode that dead horse. And forget the “that” in that sentence. Why are pronouns and miscellaneous “determiners” so necessary and confusing? Ask Ai about them both so we can move on to another subject.

Memory, and its (again?) attendant issues, are on the mind, today.

It is easy to think of things to essay about. (Yes, essay can be used as a verb. Ask your own Emma.) Life itself can be written about ad nauseum, and an inquisitive mind and active fingers can even exhaustively explicate dust particles.

(Short break for Emma’s Ai dissertation on Dust.)

The problem is most Great Ideas come at inconvenient times. No, not the bathroom, but when zooming up Route 365 To Turning Stone at highway speeds whose numerical value is determined by a possible law enforcement presence. Or trying to get to sleep. Imagine being tired and a “great idea for an essay or story” pops into your head. Do you get up? Do you wait for the next pee break? Do you stay completely still and hope sleep comes immediately?

I used to get up but after a “certain age” getting back to sleep became a bigger problem than forgetting a Great Idea, especially with the Urination Schedule of The Senior Male already causing sleep interruptions. Great Ideas are a dime a dozen, or $2.25 per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for April 2026. No. I will not research a true local and current price. It might not be good news. And it’s best to lay (lie?) still and wait.

Where were we? Great Ideas and how to manage them. Many times I’ve solved the world’s problems while watching for early morning, road-crossing deer during the flight up Route 365 at excessive and probably unsafe speeds. There is no way to let go the wheel and take notes or drive one-handed while glancing back and forth from phone to windshield. Understandably for a senior, by the time I land in the parking garage 5 minutes later, The Great Idea is gone, lost in the swirling mists of history much like my ancient football career, the facts–if not lost–not to be relied upon if recovered.** Yes, I often channel Al Bundy.

If I’d had typed the **footnote here, I’d be done by now, with my eventual point only partly constructed:  if you want to remember something you have to…um…

Okay. We’ll head in another direction and act like the preceding never happened.

There is a lot to regret, miss, and moan about as things in our lives change and flex and swivel and slide down the backside of life.

But there are also interesting, beautiful, amazing, startling, and informative things, too, if we can remember to spend less time moaning about getting older.***

When watching documentaries (like the 8 hour one on China) you have to wonder if the people living in The Ming Dynasty had any time to enjoy life before millions of them died hundreds of years ago. Did they have any Great Ideas? If you know about ancient warfare, how did the losers of wars deal with the loss and the subsequent torture and “elimination” of themselves and their neighbors?

 History is full of Great Ideas.

Like, why were we given the necessary tools to ask and try to understand them?

Wouldn’t it be better to be that front monkey getting groomed?****

*Where does all the dust come from? What is it made of? Who named it dust? Is a living thing or inanimate detritus? OMG, do NOT google or Ai this word…unless you have time…

**Except for the scholarship to a great university that lead to the best year of my life in 1970-1971. Hey, that’s a Great Idea for next time!

***It is so interesting to hear a 50-year-old complain about aging. Or a 40-year-old. It makes a 74-year-old feel so fecking smart. They should pass a law about when it’s okay to complain about age. ANY age. And who is They?

****An it and a that in one sentence. We’ve come a long way from grunts and farts.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, My Ass

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Shakespeare* wrote those words–except for “My Ass”– hundreds of years ago when a well-known, porcine-related character discussed death with himself. It is a profound, deep-meaning soliloquy with oft-quoted-out-of-context short and long sentences with clauses, semi-colons, and dramatic commas resulting in an excellent rant about Existence and the The End**.

Modern American Seniors have their own opinions, however, on what The Bard of Avon was really referring to: actual loss of sleep. It is odd how William makes “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” seem so dramatic when all we really hear is there is too much going on to get some, good, solid, long-time sleep. There are no “slings and arrows” flying across our bedrooms*** but there is a lot of cerebral activity. So much activity the poor brain stands as if in the doorway of the bedroom, ready to flick the light switch off but…can’t..do…it.

A thought racing across our brain cells IS sometimes the knowledge we can put ourselves “to sleep perchance to dream” in a very real and permanent way but we’re just not ready yet, so…

Instead we ponder the Cognitive Impairment conundrum: how it creeps up on us and when we have it, we won’t know, even as we wonder who put our car keys in the produce drawer of the refrigerator.

Or we wonder why we feel so good but still can’t generate enough interest in a late dinner at our favorite restaurant to get us out of our favorite chair.

And is there anyone who will listen to us and invent easy-on, easy-off socks?

Even worse: is there anyone who will listen to us at all?

The night then becomes a debate between…what was I talking about?

Oh, yes, how hard it is to sleep the good sleep, anymore. Most nights start well, even when the Yankees lose. But after the first few hours of sleep, when the first bathroom “break” wakes us with an unnecessary urgency, and shortly after we check the refrigerator for the perfect, healthy snack that won’t harm our brushed teeth or sensitive digestion system, it is the re-falling back asleep that fails, utterly****.

After the many nights this happens it is clearly no longer about slings and arrows or The End, but a thought all its own that consumes one: will I ever get back to sleep? The question is accompanied by the close observation and analysis of anything that comes to mind from the macro, like our current high inflation, to the micro: will I be warm enough without socks?

Running out pf space, as usual, but when your own brain becomes your own sleep disrupter…well, I never remember that happening as a young man.

Hmm. Is that because of a bad memory, it never happened, or Cognitive Decline?

Let me sleep on it.

*Probably. Or he may not have. Or someone else did. A guy named Bacon. Or an alien.

**Most Americans probably can recite this speech by simply muttering every short, trite saying they’ve heard about Shakespeare. To be or not to be. Whether tis nobler.  To sleep, etc…oh, and “the tyranny of life”.

***Or any of the other areas we may try to get (eye) closure.

****Wonderfully guttural word. And, yes, that is how I found my keys.

*****In upstate NY the temperatures change fast. A semi-nude, 80 degree outside sleep session can be sadly ended when the toes warn your body the early-morning outside temperature has dropped to 60. Socks, again?

For The Childish, The Young At Heart, And Anyone Who Wants To Be

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I’ve written about Seasonal Affective Disorder(SAD) before and it’s time to mention it again. I call it SAD because that what it is, but when it tried to grab me recently, tools to combat its kidnapping attempt were readily at hand. One tool is childishness, also known as silliness, which is not to be confused with The Ministry of Silly Walks, though if SAD keeps happening, we might need to mount an appropriate Federal response.

SAD likes to come at night and park itself between the ears before you are awake enough, to recognize its infestation and open the toll box. So it was last night, but I was on to it early. My second-floor wall of windows lets me see the world from above and as the snow fell and covered everything, the first thought was how lucky I was to face the parking lot. Other times in the year the direction I faced was irrelevant. But when it snows, I am blessed to see the beauty of the snowfall, the silent throttling of all negativity, the carpeting of the dirty, dingey world with something pure (at night only!), white, and Godlike. (Apologies for calling it God’s dandruff, in an earlier afternoon post.) From high on the…from my window then the world goes quiet, beautiful, serene…you could hear a pin drop on the soft, snowy cushions*

Then the machines come. Big, ornery machines, throwing the snow aside as if angry for the snow’s hubris. The machine march begins with one large, Transformer-like, crab-walking, black exhaust spewing noisy mother-, sorry, big freaking thing. It makes mighty sweeps through the parking lot grid as if it were PacMan high on a Power Pellet. Then, the smaller worker bees, the fine-tuners come out and scurry around the grid, snipping, here, cutting here, and leaving piles of used, white fabric in the main grid for PacMan. As if divinely designed, Pacman takes all the snow off stage left to a pile I can imagine is snow heaven. Or snow purgatory? Probably just a big pile, but you get the drift.**

As if that wasn’t enough entertainment, these little black stick figures began to move about. Most were unrecognizable with coverings of enormous bulbous-ness and fluffiness, but there was a figure in shorts. His appearance was brief. Most walked with high strides, as if practicing for Monty Python. They all walked towards mounds of snow from which lights shown, as if someone had a remote starter for their cars and they had, oh, yes, exactly like that.

Tai Chi*** has a movement called “Stroking The Birds Tail”. Every one of the stick figuers must be a Tai Chi master cause they also used “Moving The Clouds Away”, and finally, “Lotus Flower”. No one did “White Crane Spreads Its Wings”, but my neighbors’ knowledge of ancient Chinese movements was not only impressive, but surprising.

What was I talking about, again? Oh, yeah, being SAD. The malady had not completely been expelled until this thought: I can’t wait to tell “unnamed person” (UPER) about this. She (hint) will love it.” In other words, a fun time was made better by knowing there was someone to share it with, someone who would actually listen. UPER is a “high S with some I” personality so I knew when she heard the story there’d be no roll of the eyes, no wonder about what might be wrong with this person, this me, babbling on about snow. I had faith.

Fun, friendship, and Faith…was that the point of today’s post?

Oh, right SAD. Let’s not waste anymore time on that stupid subject.

*Apologies for really mangling that metaphor. Pin? Snowy cushions?

**I am so proud of that pun. Wait, how many knew it was a pun?

Death? Again? Noooo….

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I’m having lots of trouble sleeping. You? The mind races with thoughts about SAD, Trump, America, Social Security, Medicare, apartments, homes, health, and an ex-girlfriend whose hurtful actions can’t be forgiven

At age 73, shouldn’t another word be on that list?

As my mind raced last night that word popped into my head: Death. Wide awake and ruminating away about everything except…death (small d, this time, see the difference?).

The realization mortality was not part of my late night consternation festival kind of made me happy. Maybe, pleased with myself is a better description. Death is a constant companion in old age. When the news reports an actor’s death at 69, or the retired sports star’s life ends at 72, one can not help but think he, me, is lucky to be able to hear the news. Going to bed isn’t accompanied by the hope of waking up alive, but it is a subtext, especially if dying in your sleep is your preferred method of reaching the afterlife.

Sidebar: All morning a thought from last night has been escaping me. An important thought, I thought, but obviously not important enough for me to get out of bed and write it down. In the above paragraph it revealed itself, so I’ll share, plus many thanks to my slowing brain for not deleting the idea and making me work for it. The thought: When you die in your sleep, do you know you’re dying? Or is death just an eternal extension of sleep? Imagine being shot or stabbed, or suffering from a mortal illness. You spend at least a few moments knowing it is the end, don’t you? You may even spend minutes, hours, or days getting ready for the final breath…wishing things were different.

After reading the sidebar, it appears Death/death did enter nighttime, cranial ramblings, albeit, in a Dr. Steven Wright kind of way.

Of course, the whole point of this essay is how funny the mind works so this writing can be accepted as cogent.

Okay, I agree with myself except for the fact “cogent” refers to a well-stated “argument or case, one that is clear, logical and convincing.” So says the Oxford people. But I just read back through this jumble and can’t see anywhere a “case” or “argument” has been made.  For or against anything. Does that make the entire exercise pointless?

Let’s go with a “yes”, because an answer makes a case, makes an argument, and my inability to focus and write an essay sensible and informative suddenly becomes indisputable. I knock over your King.

With a re-read and hindsight, this gibberish fits the style of our modern news, anyway. I’m topical!

And relevant.

The real villain is SAD. “Seasonal Affective Disorder” is a real thing. A long, never-ending winter in Upstate New York is the cause. It’s been over 20 years since my life was “snowed under” by weather that saps the soul, steals the “joie de vive”, and makes an Independent Liberal long for Florida.

It won’t happen again.

Early Morning Something or Other

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It’s 1:30 am, EST, and I’m not only awake, but rested. The Yankees won, so, that helps. And Aaron judge finally homered. Yay.

My days, lately, have inverted themselves. I sleep/nap a lot in the day and spend the night wide awake, rested and wondering about all the things a 20-year-old never had a clue he would be wondering about 52 years later. As a possible misanthrope, (don’t know where to go to get a fair and accurate diagnosis) it’s a pleasure having fewer people awake and milling about, doing nothing but making noise. In this area of upstate NY there are no 24 hour stores, or fitness centers, or any other place to wander around, so here I am. I’ll be at one or the other my fitness centers when they open at 6, and be back to my apartment, toned and refreshed, by the time most everyone else arises and starts to ruin the world.

This early morning post is obviously going nowhere, more like therapy. The daily dose of news has been consumed. The times for the day’s sporting events have been entered into my crowded schedule. I’ve checked my credit union to make sure my identity has not been stolen and money siphoned from accounts. Finished my Kia Warranty paperwork for Limpy, the car that shut down on me while driving. Getting it repaired was a thoroughly enjoyable venture into the world of corporations who communicate poorly and care little for 72 year-old health-challenged humans who need their car. Nuts, to them. They won’t have me to not call back much longer.

As a slower burner of calories, it’s time to plan the days food festivities. Being disabled has reduced my step rate from a healthy 8-10,000 a day, pre-Calamities, to the current dis-respectable average of 2,500 steps. I allow myself the luxury of not worrying about it, anymore, since swimming doesn’t translate into steps, so…I’m good.

I should probably go the bathroom. Maybe a piece of toast. Too early for 120 calories of carbos?

Huh. I’m tired. Just now. Just like that. 2am and back to bed. Not bad. Wonder how many calories I burned typing…