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.  

Last Minute Madness

The past month has been, as seems to have become the norm, busy with plenty of comings and goings. Camping, daytrips and long weekends filled with fun and adventure.  With all these points of excitement planning and organizing becomes a necessity which is not something I struggle with so all should be good, right?

Well yes, except in those last few moments when even the most organized of people can’t help but feel just a little bit mad.  Not angry no, although occasional snips at one another do tend to pop up in these moments, I’m speaking off the lost your head kind of thing.

It seems that when leaving on either a week of vacation or a simple little day trip a few moments of last minute madness is all but inevitable.  In those last few moments when everything comes together, or fails to do so we all have our weak points.  

My own particular brand of last minute madness always centers on one thing, the idea that I’ve forgotten something.  It seems I’m unable to avoid that nagging little feeling in the back of my mind which says, indeed screams, that I am missing something.

I’ve never actually forgotten anything of importance or even kind of important. It seems that my organization skills pay off here and we have never needed to turn around to grab or do something we’ve forgotten and yet that feeling persists.

On the one hand my minds inability to trust I have everything allows me to focus on not leaving anything behind or undone yet I would rather be without that nagging feeling.  That worry, that last minute madness is something I could do without.