Emotional Analgesic...

Quite recently, (since I started filling the void), I have discovered an analgesic of sorts. Doing this one simple action has lead to drastic changes in my everyday life. I have more energy and I will even go as far as to say it has helped alter my outlook on life. What did I do? I took my ass to bed!

On average, I would get around 5 hours of sleep per night during the week. Sometimes I would only get 4. Occasionally I would be forced to decide between taking a three hour nap and risk getting to work around noon or just staying up and getting to work ultra-early. (The fact that my job only cares that its employees get 40 hours a week and not exactly WHEN you work them does not help.) Either way, the next day would be spent being tired as all hell, extremely irritable and sometimes too tired to hit the gym. The weekends would be even worse! I'd stay up very late at night and then practically sleep away the entire day. Seeing as how most of my home improvement time is on the weekend, its a wonder I've gotten as far as I have in remodeling my house. This has been my schedule for the longest time now; so long in fact, that I forgot what a good nights sleep felt like and just accepted for "normal" how miserable I was at work during the day.

What was I doing that I was staying up so late during the week? I was either visiting the sig O (significant other) or watching TV or playing video games or watching a movie. I'd go to sleep late, wake up late, get to work late, leave late and then go to bed late. It was a vicious cycle and I am not alone. The average American adult gets 5-6 hours of sleep a night. Its no wonder that StarBucks is making billions selling caffeine to people! The reason, at least for me, was that there is SO much information to process. There's the TV, my books, the radio and my sig O. Or rather there was the sig O but when I had one, our relationship would take up much of my time.

It was the absence of the sig O in my life that started getting me to bed on time as well as the motivation to start hitting the gym a lot harder and more frequently than I had been. I made up my mind to start prioritizing my interests so that I'd be in bed by 9-10pm so that I could be up and out of the house by 6:15 the next day. My DVR from Comcast also helped a lot. My two favorite programs (The Daily Show and Family Guy) come on late at night. Rather than staying up late and watching them, I'd record the shows and watch them the next day or on the weekend have a little mini-marathon.

The results were dramatic. Every morning I would literally have to drag myself out of bed and into the shower. Nowadays, I am awake and energized a little before the alarm goes off. I find it a lot easier to focus at work whereas before I would make very silly mistakes as well as spend a lot of time correcting them. I also find myself more at peace and a lot less irritable. The morbidly obese diabetic man on crutches sounding like Darth Vadar who works near me no longer annoys me to tears with his heavy breathing (from hobbling to the bathroom) or his snacking. There was a point where I considered asking to be moved as to not be around him. His noises are still a mild annoyance though (more on that at a later post). I have also managed to paint over the burn stains in the kitchen. I woke up early enough on a Saturday and just got it done. Much to my delight, I had enough day time left to go to other things! I have also been to the gym a lot more nowadays than I used to before. Where I would take days off because I was too tired, now I have the energy to do what I need to do at the gym as well. The results will be the subject of yet another later post.

Who would have known that such a small thing as making sure you get enough sleep would lead to such drastic changes? I encourage anyone who feels irritable at work, is ready to pass out at 2pm or who goes home and just falls out to look at their sleep habits and to MAKE time to get at least eight hours each night. I gaurantee that it will help. (Unless you got some kind of sickness, are taking drugs or your irritability at work has more to do with your coworkers than your sleep; in that case, I can't help you there!)

In retrospect, my lack of decent sleep was, at the end of the day part of The Void. Restful sleep was yet another personal sacrifice I made for a relationship. Some were worse than others; "Murray" lived a lot further away and so I had to get up a lot earlier to make it to work at a decent hour. Sometimes I'd eat up some vacation time by taking an impromptu day off.

One thing is for certain. Whether it be books or video games, Comedy Central or "The Family Guy", new "situation" as Erykah puts it or a date, I will make sure to get enough rest, at least during the week!