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.


What I've noticed is that my body is ahead of my brain in its need of rest. When I return home from work or when the weekend starts, I've noticed that my body starts to slow down. I have lists of things that I want to work on outside of the work day; sometimes things get done and sometimes they don't. It is fine. The day is full of so much churn and information that pausing seems inescapable. The other thing I've start to notice is how mindless rest is so dissatisfying. I don't think Netflix is mindless but I know when I just have it playing in the background, endless repeats of my favorite show, it isn't refreshing. I think that is partly why I took up doing puzzles: doing them uses a different part of my brain. It must be helping because I started with 350 pieces and am pretty close to finishing a 2000 piece one. Still, if I'm left not busy, my mind idles and idles itself into a general uneasiness. Maybe that gets over in my forties :)?