I have been taking a mid day cat nap for the past few days and I highly recommend them to anyone and everyone. I have never been one to nap. Either from being too busy, or just never really having the means to take nap, from being at school, or work, or just not near a place to curl up and sleep for a spell, I have just not had the lifestyle that has lent itself to taking a nap. Well, the past few days I have been able to steal a few afternoon hours for a bit of shut eye and man o man, let me tell you, it is just great. I wake up around 5 in the afternoon and after the initial grogginess is over I am refreshed and rejuvenated, ready for the night. I am not like I was when I was 19 years old and I could be active all day, come home and take a shower then go out and party all night. Those days are behind me. My youthful energy has been traded in for age and wisdom. I wouldn’t change things. I wouldn’t say that I want to be young again, I just need to adjust my lifestyle to fit the life I lead. I realized a few months ago that this daily siesta would work well, and it has. I feel like I still have a few years of wanting to go out at night every now and again, so I prepare by napping. I have also realized that I am more well rested the next day when I get a nap the afternoon before. I am not sure what scientific evidence there is of how a nap helps you, but I do know that if you don’t get your needed eight hours of sleep at night you will increase your chance of stroke or heart failure later in life. If you don’t get a full eight hours of sleep you can “catch up” by taking a mid day nap. So relax, and try to nap yourself into happiness and awakeness.

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Waking up early isn’t fun, especially if the sun has yet to come out and the world outside your bed is cold and dark. No one looks forward to those first cold steps on a hard floor, blinding light bulbs and a puffy, sleepy reflection. As much as it sucks to be woken up by a nagging beep or perky, morning show idiot, after showering and getting dressed, it feels good to be up early. Waking up before you absolutely have to gives you a head start on the day. You can usually stay ahead of problems by having a little extra time in the morning. For one, your not rushing around knocking things over and forgetting your stuff while you rush out the door. You also have time to fill up your tank before work if it’s on empty like mine usually is. My gas light tends to only be on when I’m running late and rushing around like crazy. Plus, being awake early gives you a little more time to spend in the world before you have to deal with traffic, idiots, work, or school. You have more time to get a grip on yourself, and be more deliberate about your day. You can make sure you have what you need and look decent. You know it’s not gonna be a good day when you don’t have time to shower, your makeup or facial hair look like you just came from the bar, and you have to dig out your spare keys to get into your car. An old Indian man told me that the key to good health and a long life is waking up with the sun every day. I buy that. Everyday id kinda pushing it, but most days I at least make an effort to wake up before I have too.

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There are so many different types of alarm clocks. You can get the ones with the big digital numbers on them, with the annoying beep beep beep sound that wakes you up. There are the ones that wake you with the sound of music, either you choose the song or the radio station. Some people like to use the alarm clocks on their TV’s to wake them, but I don’t think this would work very well for me since I like to fall asleep with my TV on. I think one of the most common alarm clocks people use these days are their cell phones. I don’t have a clock in my room because I don’t like to have the light when I’m trying to sleep, so I have used my cell phone as my alarm clock probably since I was 16. The best alarm clock in the world is your internal one, though. Once you have it trained, it really does work. Every day I wake up at 8:15 am or right around there, even if my alarm clock isn’t set. When I was in college this didn’t work because I was never on the same sleep schedule every day, and I took random naps all the time that really messed with it. But, once you get it going on a pretty normal schedule it really does continue to wake you up everyday, even on the weekend or when you don’t need to wake up. I wouldn’t throw my alarm clock away or anything and trust it, but it’s cool that my body has it’s own built in alarm clock.

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I have a lot of things when I’m sleeping that have to be just right before I can actually drift off. I like to have my TV turned on to sleep timer, I like for it to be completely dark other than the TV in the room, I can’t have any blinking lights on or any neon lights, and I have to have some background noise. Whether it’s a humidifier, the ceiling fan, the TV, or a little fan on my floor, I have to have something in the background making noise so I can’t hear anything strange or anything coming from outside my window. I hate to hear cars come into the parking lot, or hear people talking, or someone locking or unlocking their car and it beeps. I just am a really light sleeper and when I can hear those things there’s no way I am going to be able to fall asleep. So, I turn on the TV until I drift off, and then after that I have a fan on so that I can’t hear anything outside that wil wake me up. I think anyone who is having trouble sleeping or is a light sleeper needs to try having a little fan on the floor or by their bed in their room, because it really does help me. Sometimes, just the heater kicking on can wake me up from sleeping. Just having that constant noise going blocks out any other random noises that might disturb me. If I’m really sleepy I usually don’t have this problem and I can sleep, but otherwise I need the fan to stay asleep!

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I am the lightest sleeper in existence. If you stare at me when I’m sleeping it will wake me up. I can’t stand any type of lights in my room when I’m sleeping, so I can’t have an alarm clock in there. I have to put take over the little light on the power button on my TV. For many years, I had to put foil over my windows, but I got into trouble at my apartment complex so now I have thick black curtain to block out the evil sun. Depending on if I’m at home or at my apartment here in Lubbock, my door has to be open a certain width for me to be able to sleep. I prefer all other doors in the room to be closed. I don’t like my fan to be very high, because I sleep in my contacts and it dries them out. All of these things are slowly getting to be easier to deal with, but I still have a hard time sleeping if I’m disturbed. Especially now that I’m working the same hours every day it’s easier for me to go to bed and not be woken up in the middle of the night for stupid reasons because I’m actually tired. When I was younger it was really bad, I would get so mad if someone messed with how my door was open because I thought my cat wouldn’t be able to get into the room. Now, I don’t even have tape on my TV power button anymore! Look at me I’m slowly growing up.

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