Tag Archives: sleep

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Color commentary. I hate people who feel the need to share at every opportunity… and nothing fills me with more homicidal rage than listening to a nonstop stream of running commentary about how the day is going from a few desks away. This didn’t work. That didn’t work. I just had to reboot for the 100th time. AnnoyingYes, look, we all know the network is in a bit of a snit. Most people are experiencing the same issues… and rest assured, those few who aren’t experiencing your issues are having issues of their own. In times of crisis, my best advice is to sit down, STFU, and try not to aggravate the ever-loving hell out of those around you. John Madden’s commentary may have been obnoxious, but at least that meathead came with a mute button.

2. Spam (the electronic kind, not the gelatinous potted meat or the song). If you’re a business and you have my email address – my real address and not a junk account I set up to catch wayward marketers – you already have products or services that I like and use on a regular basis. The best way in all the world to convince me to never purchase anything from your business ever again is to flood my inbox with “helpful” email. I’m already a customer. I don’t need to be reminded. When I need a refill, a reorder, or a new product, I know where to find you… and even if I forget, there’s a better than average chance Google will be able to track you down.

3. Sleep. Every now and then I convince myself that I’ll get along perfectly fine on four hours of sleep. Usually those occasions revolve not being in a good place to stop reading or wanting to “catch the end” of some 50 year old move I’ve seen dozens of times already. Very rarely they’re the result of just plain old not being able to fall asleep on schedule. Regardless of the cause, the result is always the same – by 2:30 the next afternoon, I’m poring coffee down my throat in Big Gulp sized quantities and still barely manage to keep my head from slamming into the keyboard. I’ve grudgingly accepted that sleep is an inconvenient necessity. I think in fairness sleep should concede to me at least one day a week where I can get less than five hours of it and still feel mostly like a human being.

Library paste…

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I’m off my game today. Distracted, unfocused, and generally running well short of personal expectations is no way to spend a Monday. It’s no way to spend any day, really. My head has been all over the map for the last week and there’s not one single thing I’ve touched that’s the better for it. I felt like a Jack Russell with ADD at work today bouncing from one thing elmers_pasteto the next without every really getting a solid grip on any of it. Writing? Yeah, that’s been a joke. I’ve been lucky to string just enough sentences together every day to still consider myself a blogger, but barely. Making headway on any of the other concepts, comments, and works-in-progress that are sitting around at any given time is filed away under “too hard to do.”

I’ve had stretches like this before. They suck. It’s like watching the rest of the world running in fast forward while you’re swimming through library paste trying to keep up. I’ll hit the rack tonight thoroughly frazzled from the day’s mental exertions. If there’s any good to come from it, it’s that on days like this sleep comes fast and hard – and it’s not that sissy light, tossing, turning, dreaming sleep, but a deep, blank stretch of the stuff. I’ll be asleep tonight before my head hits the pillow. Some people pay good money for that kind of sleep, but I’ll get mine no prescription needed.

I’ll find my footing in a day or two. That’s how it always is with this stuff. At least I’m getting someone quality sleep out of the deal.

Lack of sleep, coffee, and other stuff…

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It’s Easter morning and thanks to the decongestant I’ve been living on for the last week I slept for a grand total of two hours last night (and then only when I propped myself up in the recliner so I could actually breath). Either one of those factors, by itself, would probably be sufficient justification for letting the regular sunday posts fall by the wayside. But still, here I am – bleary eyed, hacking my damned fool head off, and not even sure if the words I’m throwing together make any sense at all. Sick or well, it’s just what I do on Sunday mornings.

At some point in the not too distant future I’m sure there will be a wall and that I will run into it with predictably bad consequences. In the meantime, I’m trying to front load as many of the days activities as I can into the morning. Since my ability to craft a coherent narrative is a bit suspect at this point, I’ll cut this short and just let you know that the Sunday update from the archives is available at your convenience.

Feel free to stop by for a visit in May and June 2007.

Spoke too soon…

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Last Saturday I commented on the more or less mundane weekend routine I like to slip into. As usual, life has conspired to turn me into a liar at the first available opportunity. Someone (I’m looking at you, Cait) bet me a chicken dinner that I couldn’t stay awake until midnight… which was summarily changed to 1:30 when I showed signs of getting it done. I might have seen the clock roll past 3AM before finally dropping off. It was a matter of principle, after all. Sadly, my internal clock doesn’t stand on principle so I was still wide awake at 7:30. That’s fine. I mean who needs more than four hours of sleep anyway?

Fortunately, I managed to find the coffee without too much trouble and even got a roast in the crock pot (yeah, I don’t know when I’m going to get my chicken dinner prize). Winston decided it was a good morning to eat a bottle of hand sanitizer, so I’m keeping an eye on him, too. And the person who instigated this chain of events is still asleep. Somehow I thing I’m getting the short end of the bet-you-can’t-say-awake deal. It’s decidedly not a routine Saturday.

If anyone needs me, there’s a good chance I’ll be right here – asleep at the keyboard.

Sleep…

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I know some people revel in spending as much time in bed as possible. Listening to them talk about a good night’s sleep is like listening to someone describe their deeply held religious convictions. I have a slightly more utilitarian relationship with my bed; it’s a necessary evil that occupies one room on the house and I try to limit my interaction with it as much as possible. I’ve said it before, but I can’t quite shake the idea that sleep is just a enormous time suck that’s trying to eat up a third of the day… and there are always things I’d rather be doing that, you know, just laying around.

I do have to admit, though, that sleep does have one thing going for it; even though it takes up five or six hours, the time goes by fast. By that I mean there’s no sense that time is really passing. You fall asleep and bam, you’re waking up. Even when eight or more hours intervene between Point A and Point B, it feels almost instantaneous.

A good point of comparison is long haul flying, since even on red eye flights, I’ve never been able to get comfortable enough to actually fall asleep… Getting from the East Coast to LA or to London feels like it takes something just short of forever, even though it’s really only five or six hours (which conveniently for this thought exercise is about the amount of time I sleep most nights). Whether I’m flying across the pond or sleeping at home, the same amount of time passes, but one feels much shorter than the other. That’s for the best, of course, because if every night felt like it lasted as long as trans-continental flight, you’d never convince me that going to sleep was a good idea.

There’s not really a “so what” to this post other than time, our perception of it, and what it all means are topics that I currently find fascinating… and since I’m the proprietor of this establishment, it’s what everyone gets to read about today.

Mad props…

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I’m going to level with you. I have no earthly idea how you people with a wife/husband and an assortment of kids get through your day. It’s Friday afternoon and I don’t mind telling you that I’m flat out exhausted by the week when it rolls to a close. I’m exhausted from the sheer volume of human interaction that it takes to get through the day. Being an introvert, every one of those interactions requires a tremendous amount of energy to fight my natural instinct towards keeping everything a nice respectable distance. You’re just going to have to take my word for it when I say it’s exhausting in its own right, which brings me back around to the point of this discussion.

I’m almost positive I’ve said this before, but my hat’s off to you guys out there who get home and then turn around and fill the night with soccer practice, dance rehearsal, tutoring, going to the mall, or whatever the case may be. How you keep up with it is quite simply beyond me. If I don’t have those 4-5 hours between work and sleep to block out the world and refocus, I’m told I have the disposition of an angry badger… and that’s not fun for anyone involved. I suppose we all do what whatever we have to based on the situation we’re in, but in this case the only thought I can offer is “better you than me.” Seriously. I have an deep, yet purely academic appreciation for what you do, but I’m so glad it’s not on my agenda that the English language doesn’t have an appropriate way to describe it. Keep up the good work.

Now if you’ll pardon me, it’s time for a glass of wine and a good book so I can marshal my energy for dealing with the world tomorrow morning.

From the Mailbag: Energy Shot

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The Question: How about you take on buying “energy shots” to make it through the day versus getting enough sleep to make it through the day?

The Answer: I wish this is one I could take on with some authority, but I don’t have any actual firsthand experience with these newfangled energy drinks. In the finest traditions of blogs everywhere, though, I’m not going to let my lack of expertise or experience stand in the way of issuing a definitive opinion on the matter.

The closest I’ve come to trying an energy drink was an unfortunate episode when a bartender handed me a drink made with Red Bull. As I recall, it tasted almost exactly like red cough syrup. That’s a flavor I don’t find particular appealing in an adult beverage and as I recall, most of it was left sitting on the bar.

While I can’t speak with any competence on Red Bull or 5-Hour Energy, I do have a certain familiarity with coffee – civilization’s original energy drink. I’d be hard pressed to function without its steady rush into my system throughout the day. At the moment, I’d say I average somewhere in the vicinity of a pot a day. Some days it’s a little more, some a little less. When it gets to be a lot less, then the blinding headaches start so that doesn’t happen very often.

I’m sure there’s plenty of virtue in getting a “full night’s sleep”, whatever that is. Personally, if I spend more than about six hours in bed I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m wasting too much time just laying around being more or less unconscious. In fact I’m pretty annoyed that sleep demands even that fifth of my day, when there always seems like something more productive or at least more interesting that I could do with that time.

Maybe it’s the wimp’s way out, but I suspect that right combination of stimulants and sleep are probably intensely personal. What works for me probably won’t work for someone else. How else could I explain people who seem to spend their whole weekend in bed (other than calling them out as incredible slackers, of course)? As it stands, I’ve got maybe 35 good years left on this rock and I don’t intend to spend a third of them abed.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Team Building Activities. It’s pretty rare that I run into a topic on which I can’t speak with at least some degree of confidence. I discovered this week while developing and delivering a group presentation titled “How to Change a Diaper” that almost anything related to the care and maintenance of a human baby is apparently one of those topical areas with which I am completely unacquainted. I’m happy to give the presentation, but ecstatic to leave the details and task execution to others. In this case, ignorance truly is bliss.

2. Sleep. Yes, I know this is one that crops up from time to time, but it’s been worse this week than most. In your standard day, you only get 24 hours and to be frank, I’m not willing to give up any more than 1/4 of it on just laying around essentially unconscious. It’s not that I’m exceptionally busy or feel that anything I’m doing is especially important, just that I think there are better ways to spend the day that being quietly tucked into a warm bed. Lately, though, the standard six hours hasn’t really felt like enough. I probably just need to find a way to crank more caffeine into the system to overcome the increased coefficient of drag.

3. The media. Again. For the last week or so, they’ve been filling the television set with the story of an overzealous and potentially crazy neighborhood watch captain gunning down an innocent kid on his way home from the corner store. Other outlets are screaming that the kid wasn’t as innocent as we’re being lead to believe. Either way, it makes a good story and a nifty bit of narrative for the media to run with. What none of the stories do, though, is tell me exactly what happened. Personally, I’m reserving judgement until more than speculation is known. We were once a nation of laws rather than a media drive lynch mob. It’s a pity that’s not still the case.

Lame…

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It’s good to start the weekend with a closet full of freshly laundered clothes. The fact that laundering those clothes is what I’ve done so far on my Friday night is pretty lame. It would possibly be forgivable if I were going to change into some of those cleaned clothes and go do something interesting, but what’s really going to happen is I’m going to hit the couch with my iPad and read until I can’t keep my eyes open. Then I’ll take the dogs out and go to bed. Probably around 10:00. Yeah. Lame. But I’ll bounce out of bed at 6:45 tomorrow morning feeling rested and reasonably well put together… Which in retrospect is probably also a cause for concern. Although since that’s sleeping in by almost two hours, maybe it’s not so bad, right? Right? *insert cricket chirps*