Deadlines on Sleep

Redundant, repetitive shrieks reverberate against the walls, torturously shocking my consciousness from a dream and into a nightmare. Suffocating my ears in a pile of pillows fails to drown the sound vibrantly pulsating from across the room. My eyes are rusted shut like the doors of a two-car garage and when I finally am able to pry them open, a truck of overwhelming sensation plows through them, unloading a monstrous mass of cold, raw concrete into the frontal lobes of my brain. My vision is blurry and the siren signaling the dusk of liberty and the dawn of a new day continue as I reluctantly peel the covers from my body, exposing it to the teeth of cold air nipping at my every surface. Then suddenly, the pressure of a powerful geyser overwhelms my bladder and I sprint to the bathroom, gouging the bottoms of my bare feet on any objects in my path.

This is what waking up is like every single morning. Waking up is painful. The same suggestion I’ve heard my entire life is to get to bed earlier. Okay. Fine. I get to bed earlier. Then what? I lay there awake. I count sheep, count breaths, practice conscious relaxation exercises, and whatever. I’m still awake. Just because I’m in bed doesn’t mean I’m going to be asleep. Then I wake up and the whole thing starts over again. Sometimes I go to great lengths to force myself into being a morning person. I set my alarm incredibly early so I’m tired that night. I can keep that up for a while, but I always fall back into the exact opposite pattern. What the hell is wrong with me?

Nothing. Nothing is wrong with me. It’s the way nature intended me to be. It’s our society to blame, not me. Why is our society so discriminatory against those with biological clocks such as mine? Why are natural nocturnes persecuted like this? Whose great idea was it to have the work day begin early in the morning and end in the afternoon? Is that some kind of idea they had in 1301? 1423? Why not start in the afternoon, end in the evening, and have all night as free time? I mean, really. Why the fuck not? How many morning persons do you know and how many non-morning persons do you know? Don’t we live in a democracy? Can’t we vote on this or something?

Not getting enough sleep is one of the major causes of fatigue. That’s a direct line from a radio advertisement. Well, no shit! Duh! That’s my first reaction. Then I got to thinking that maybe people really don’t realize that. That’s why we are so incredibly faithful to this tradition of beginning the day so goddamn early. The negative outcome is that it’s not good for the body to go without enough sleep. Almost everyone does though. Then we drink caffeine to wake ourselves up and then take sleeping pills to knock ourselves out. Those things aren’t good either. If we weren’t so hell-bent on this tradition of early birds and worms and that bullshit, we wouldn’t have a need for coffee or eight-thousand brands of canned energy drinks. We wouldn’t need melatonin caplets or valerian teas or overdoses of Nyquil.

Think about it. Work could start at around one in the afternoon and end at seven. Then there’s plenty of free time until going to bed as late as four in the morning and still getting eight hours with a full hour to get ready in the morning. That sounds incredible to me. What would be the problem? Some may argue that eventually that would be too early and someone like me would start bitching about it. Well, so what? Bump it up again. What does it matter? Before we conquered and spread our culture of plastic bags and Cheeze Wiz, the Natives woke up when they were well-rested and went to sleep when they were tired. What a concept! Why can’t we do that? Well, we need some kind of plan, or things never get done, of course. That’s exactly our problem. We’re obsessed with deadlines and getting things done. Why can’t things wait? There’s always tomorrow. For instance, I didn’t graduate college in four years. So? What does it truly matter? It still happened.

We have too many deadlines: Graduate high school, graduate college, get married, have kids, work, work, work, work, work, retire, sit around thinking of the old days, and die. Why is that? That sucks! I’m obviously an advocate of education, but why do we need to get married and then have kids? Why do we have to do both? Why do we have to do either? Do we really have to live up to some kind of expectation just for the sake of an expectation? We have to work to provide others services they need and in exchange we get paid so we can make purchases. Everyone has a unique skill or talent. Everyone has some kind of ability or trade they are good at. In exchange for money or other services, we use them to please others. That’s a very functional system. It works fine. Why the deadlines though? If we truly choose to pursue careers and interests we love, do we need to be motivated by the fear of punishment for failure to meet a deadline? Can’t we trust ourselves to do it eventually? Are we really that lazy?

We are that lazy, because we've made ouselves that lazy. We've made ourselves lazy with the invention of deadlines. Being somewhere at a specific time each morning is one of these deadlines. You might like to twist this around and say I’m the lazy one for wanting to sleep, but in actuality, adequate sleep would improve performance, functionality, and even brain activity. More sleep would mean smarter, harder-working people who aren’t on drugs all day. I'm tired. Good-night.

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