Rest, Rinse, Repeat

One of the attributes I aspired to most in my twenties was the need for less rest. To be completely honest, I still envy people who need less sleep to function during the day. It just gives them more time to do more -- now doing more was an absolute ideal in my twenties but now.. now I question what makes the 'more' better. I thought of myself as an insomniac during undergraduate years but I now realize that it was more likely a combination of being a natural night owl and living in a household where the only guaranteed peace was between the hours of 11 pm and 6 am.

Unfortunately, the regular world as I know it favors the early birds over night owls even though those hours are not the most productive for everyone. While the only research I look for around sleep is how to become a morning person (and believe me I have trawled the internet far and wide for this), I did come across a podcast conversation about sleep and chronotypes and honestly all I could think was how long would it take for this to intersect with the world of work (longer than I would like let's be real). This is just one of the many pieces about the different sleep chronotypes and understanding how they work best.

In my twenties, I could and would power through days that followed nights of poor and inadequate sleep. In my thirties, that is harder and it impacts my ability to spend my day in a meaningful and engaged manner. I often think about how much happened in the last decade and how little I can remember if I did not make a point to note it somewhere. Of course, a lot has shifted since then, mostly for the better. One of those shifts is a deep need to be present in the here and now. One of the lines that resonate most with me (unattributed because I have no idea who to attribute it to): If not now, then when; if not here, then where. Part of being present for me is having the energy to engage in the moment and with the person in front of me. Apparently, no amount of caffeine can substitute for sleep. Still, there is always the lingering thought in my head about what else should I be doing. I occasionally have deep anxiety about what am I forgetting to be anxious about.

Theater Week: Fulfillment Center and The Realistic Joneses

Chicago Theater Week is coming up and it is probably one of the most interesting weeks of the year for me. Of course, it's never just a week and plays start before the week and continue on afterwards.


In my first year I went to four plays in a week. That was an overkill and in years since, I have used a different approach.What I value most from TW is that it introduces me to theaters that I absolutely did not know about. The Goodman, Steppenwolf, Chicago Theater etc are good but the theater there isn't always what I enjoy. In recent months, the plays that I see on there are also not plays I want to watch -- either the description feels too vague or the plot is just not for me. I know that I like my plays to be at least somewhat solid -- I need a beginning, a story and some sort of an end. Metaphors and all are fine in small doses, but if everything is a metaphor for something or a tangent, then the play is not for me.  Note, I am not calling them bad plays. They have their place and they have their people. I am just not one of them.

In the last two weeks, we went for two plays and honestly I was pleasantly surprised (we've seen some that felt real shitty and a few months ago, walked out of one at Steppenwolf). I must say they were both at small theaters, one with a very bare bones set. Both have fairly tight seating, no coat checks and both these plays had no intermissions. If you are like me and have to pee pretty regularly, that is not a great thing. Also, if like me you have at least two bags post the work day, plus a giant coat, it is cramped. But I recognize that this is the price of watching quality theater put on by people/groups that do not have access to large amounts of donations and grants in the same way I imagine the Goodmans and Steppenwolfs do.