Goodbye to Sleep-Debt

I like everyone else in the western world have heard the theory of sleep-debt.  That each time we miss an hour of sleep it gets added into some mystical sleep bank and that in order to clear that balance we must get that hour of sleep back.

Well what this has meant for me is that whenever I have a sleepless night for whatever reason I worry. Worrying about the first sleepless night means I can’t fall asleep the next and it becomes a cycle. I get less sleep each night forward until I reach a point of sheer exhaustion and crash.  It’s always how my insomnia has worked, one night triggers it and one night of proper sleep ends it.  

Now even though the night I crash usually marks the end of a cycle of insomnia the worry over how many hours I’ve added onto my sleep debt sticks with me.  I believe this worry has on occasion even prompted a new cycle of insomnia to begin.

So while dealing with a sleepless night a while back I began thinking about the idea of sleep debt.  I thought about how it I were to add up all the hours of sleep I’ve missed in my whole life from teenage all nighters to the days as new parents just how many hours it would be.  The closest I could estimate is somewhere in the realm of astronomically high.

So short of pulling a rip van winkle there is nothing I can do about all the past hours of sleep I’ve missed and further along that train of thought I began to question how if I carry this ever expanding sleep debt around do I ever feel rested.  While I’m often fairly tired it isn’t constant and if sleep debt truly is cumulative throughout your life I should be a walking zombie.

So I decided I was going to stop worrying about sleep-debt and start thinking about it as nothing more than an urban myth.  I decided to consciously remind myself that sleep-debt is only a theory and rather than worry about it let it just let it go.   

For the first time in my adult life I can mark the time since my last bout of insomnia in months not weeks.  I still don’t get enough sleep fairly regularly and I’m often tired but I’m no longer exhausted and one sleepless night no longer leads to a week of sleepless nights.  

Whether sleep-debt is a real thing or not I’ve decided to no longer hold stock in it.  Each night is its own, whether it’s spent watching the moon slowly move across the sky or in a deep sleep for a full 8 hours one has no bearing on the other.  Not carrying a sleep debt has made my nights free.  

Big Job

It’s been a long week and I’m feeling the burn today.  I’m absolutely unequivocably spent.  Monday afternoon ten yards of dirt was delivered.  Since then every evening has been spent slowly moving the mound to the countless low spots and places in need of fill and am I ever tired.

My backyard has never exactly been well graded in fact when we first purchased this house the yard was in some serious need of attention.  A large portion was in fact dirt, full of chunks of mud and clay. At the time our focus was on getting the interior of the house redone, bathrooms, kitchen, and what not and so we simply threw some grass seed at the problem.

I eventually added my garden and we have made small improvements as time went on.  The grading and smoothing out of the lawn itself though has been something we’ve avoided.  Last summer with such constant high heat and lack of rain the soil pulled away from the foundation of the house and left a big gap in which water pooled and so there was no more putting it off.

If we were going to get a couple of yards delivered to fix the problem around the foundation we may as well get enough to level the whole yard. It’s coming along quite well although I seriously underestimated the effort required to full fill this task. 

We are not only grading the yard but also moving around some of the major structures or areas of the yard such as the fire pit.  I’m also slightly adjusting the gardens configuration, adding trees and plants and removing a very old and very thick concrete sidewalk. 

All together it’s a rather big job which at this point I’m just hoping I get done sometime this year with my back function still in place.   Also it would be really nice to be able to get the car out of the garage.