Sleep is a wonderful
thing. I miss summer when I could stay
up late and sleep late, if that’s what I felt like doing. I miss summer when it didn’t matter if I
slept three hours or ten hours a night.
Now, though, sleep is back to being a precious commodity.
I get up early. Too early.
I used to set my clock for 5:05 so it would say SOS. Then I set is for 5:15 so I could sleep a
little longer and so it said SIS. Now I’ve
got is set for 5:06 … SOB.
The main problem I have is
that I don’t sleep well. This started
when I was a kid, maybe about age eleven.
I’d go to bed late, well after midnight, and still wake up during the
night for an hour or two, unable to sleep.
Restless. All the time. Then it got better and I could sleep
again. Then I started waking up again,
but only for a few minutes and then I could sleep.
I’m back to my old ways,
though. Now I fall asleep at a
reasonable hour and hope I can sleep, or get back to sleep, if need be. Instead, I am fighting long hours or
sleeplessness in the middle of the night.
Like this morning, when I wake up at 4:15 and figure I’ll sleep for
another forty-five minutes or so.
Instead, I remain restless and wide awake until 5:00. As soon as I decide to get up, I am out like
a light for all of six minutes because the alarm is set for SOB (5:06).
The other night was the
killer, though. I woke up at 4:33 and
was pretty excited. I mean, I still felt
a little tired, and I had more than a half hour left until the alarm sounded. I was still psyched as I rolled over to go
back in for the extra time, at least until my vision cleared. I wear glasses most of the time, so I was as
sure as I could be about the time being correct.
Suddenly my vision cleared
enough to see the clock clearly.
It wasn’t 4:33. It was 4:53.
Just like that, in a
literal blink of an eye, I was robbed of my extra snooze, and my entire day was
ruined. That’s right – ruined, for the
cost of twenty minutes.
Sleep truly is a wonderful
thing, and I do miss it, but the fact remains that if I wake up, it’s a good
day. It means I’m not going to be in the
obits, at least not to start off, anyway.
Sleep may be the precious commodity, but I should probably take my small
victories where I can find them.
Besides, I’m too tired to
put up a fight. Come back and spar with
me at 4:15 a.m. when I’m wide awake.
