Friday, February 19, 2010

Neither rocket science nor brain surgery

I've known since I was about fifteen that a week on a diet will not suffice to lose the weight that you've spent years dedicatedly gaining. But I don't know how much older I'm going to have to get before the message sinks in that if you've got a sleep debt that has built up over several nights (or, of course, longer), one normal eight-hour sleep will not be enough to get you back out of the red. In my own case this has not been true since about 1978. And yet we live in hope.

5 comments:

elsewhere said...

If you want a good night's sleep, go on a long holiday where it's hard for people to contact you and it's not easy to pick up the internet.

I'm pretty happy if I make it to 7hours these days.

Elisabeth said...

I'm living on six hours a night, self imposed, so many things to do at night, not least of all these days, blogging. But at least I sleep those hours deeply.

I don't think you can ever catch up on sleep, though I gather as we age, we tend to need less until we're really old and then it's probably hard to stay awake.

Anonymous said...

One poor night's sleep = one week of catching up. In my case, that's the formula. Which means the days of going nightclubbing until dawn are well and truly over. So is staying up until midnight. These days I start eyeing off the bed and a good book arond 8:30pm. I'm not ashamed to admit any of this. Sleeping rocks!

Helen said...

I'm an office drone type and I find that on about 6 hours, which is pretty much what I get, I get very tired and sleepy at work. But once I'm home and start checking out the blogosphere/reading/watching TV/doing chores etc, I rev up to the extent where I don't feel tired at all and surprise, surprise, often get to bed much too late. Really silly!

Anonymous said...

Perhaps it is my age too, but I really think there is some sort of viral sleeping sickness going around, and if we could just all get 4 days or nights (or both?) of 10 hours we would feel like new persons.
Tyaakina
(wv copsy - policing the cosy)