Jul

31

2011

I’m Still Yawning

I’m not in the best frame of mind to write a post, particularly about the sleep experiment. But I’ll start with the positives of week 1:

The first two nights, I turned off all screens by 11pm and was in bed before midnight.
My average bedtime (12:39am) was about 40 minutes earlier this week than last week.
I was generally more aware of the time at night.
I got out of bed before 8am (considerably so except for Friday) every day except today.

But:

I didn’t really get more sleep this week. I got up earlier for work, to run, etc… than usual. So I averaged 6 hours per night this week, the same as last week.
By Friday morning, my body revolted and I got up an hour late for work. So I had to stay late on Friday, which I hate doing.
I took a big step back last night. It’s tempting to blame it all on Dave, so I will! He was three hours late in getting home and didn’t call (bad Dave!) and I was worried. And the later it gets/more tired I get, the harder it is to stop picturing him in a ditch somewhere. So I didn’t get to bed until past 3am, after he was safely home (and I’d killed him).
I couldn’t drag my ass out of bed until after 10 this morning and I was starving, so Dave and I went out for breakfast, in lieu of my official “Happy Fun Time.” Going out was pleasant, but I hate the (oh so familiar) feeling of having burned so many daylight hours sleeping. And I’m upset with myself for screwing up my frigging Happy Fun Time the very first week (the irony of being so irritated over something I call Happy Fun Time is not lost on me).
Worst of all, my eye pressure/cluster headache isn’t gone, and I was more aware of feeling tired this week than I’ve been in a while.

Disturbingly, I also almost passed out at work on Thursday. I was standing for awhile at a retirement party (during which it took all my strength to stop from grabbing my soon to be ex-colleague’s pant leg and begging her to take me with her) and in the middle of a conversation with my boss, I got that tingly, hot (and not in a good way), light-headed feeling I’ve learned from embarrassing past experience means “sit the fuck down right now.” So I had to interrupt my boss to say I didn’t feel well and needed to sit. Smooth. Later when I tried to make light of it by saying “I’m a delicate little flower,” my boss’ response was “you look pretty sturdy.” If she’d said that 15 pounds ago, I probably would have cried.

In summary, I’d rate my sleep performance this first week as in need of improvement. I definitely think I can do better next week. I’d like to average 7 hours of sleep this week. Wish me luck.