Sleeping is overrated any way! Aren’t we all meant to be awake at 4:00 am every day for no apparent reason? Unfortunately, sleepless nights and difficulty sleeping are symptoms frequently associated with Parkinson’s. For a long time, I thought it was because of the meds, but I have come to realize that it equally has to do with the disease itself. In a strange way, I am beginning to adapt to waking up every two hours or staying awake for extended periods of time. I even came up with four ways to get the most out of a sleepless night.
With my mind racing, I thought of all of the things I could do. I could find the call-in numbers to the talk radio show Coast to Coast, an all-night show devoted to paranormal activity and alien invasions; not the illegal kind but the little green guys from distant planets. Given the ambiguous nature of his content, I was confident that I could “wing it” and try to contribute to the conversation. The prospect of being heard my millions on the radio and the web certainly was appealing yet it didn’t entice me to get up and make the call. After all, if I was wrong, I would start my day by making a fool out of myself on a national radio show! I wouldn’t want to come across as a denier, or ignorant of the volumes of evidence presented by his experts claiming that extraterrestrials do live among us.
Giving up on the notion of becoming an expert on all things paranormal, I still wanted to change my routine when I experience yet another sleepless night. I began to think about all of the work I could do from home to jump start my day. It was a gamble; if the wonder pup wanted to get up and play, all prospects of a productive morning would be out the window. But what to do? I could log-in to check emails or finish the 27th iteration of this year’s budget. Playing in traffic, of which there is very little on my street at 4:00am, would be a more appealing option. Finally, I was able to identify the problem. If sleepless nights are inevitable, what should I do to take advantage of this additional time! I am a solutions guy and there is no reason to bring attention to a problem, and not propose a solution. Any of these might work for you too if you find yourself staring at the ceiling.
- Find a book, periodical or blog to read on a subject that is not part of my normal routine. Over the years I have bought a few books that resonated with me at a specific time in my life but when that phase passed, those books got moved to the bottom shelf or a box in the basement. Maybe it is time to revisit the idea of buying a sailboat or a Harley Davidson in need of a little work.
- Since I am an accountant, it’s easy to find content that will help the insomniac. Reading anything that pertains to GAAP, or speaks to the accounting rules for asset impairment, or even one better, Department of Labor publications, can put me to sleep very quickly no matter what time of day. Fortunately, there is something unnatural to even think about things like this at 4:00 am. It’s like I am violating a part of the day that was meant to be sacred.
- I could actually listen to Coast to Coast and get a feel for how the believers There is a whole sub-culture of thought leaders out there that have voices that long to be heard.
- Trying to edit something that I previously wrote, is yet another option. Believe it or not, for a brief moment, I thought this was a great idea until it became evident that my fine motor skills are not as sharp as I would like them to be in the early morning hours; hitting the wrong keys so often caused my spell-checker to crash.
Maybe I will just use my newly-found free time to create margin in my life. To explain, most people, including myself, live to the edge of the page, which means that all of my discretionary time is consumed by the demands of daily life. Work, chores, family commitments; I think that you get the drift. Do I want to use my windfall of free time to do more? Not at all! I want to claim it for exactly the opposite, to do less; to use this time when the distractions are few and the noise that derails me is absent, to carve out a time to wrestle with the important but not urgent.
While mowing the lawn the other night, I was listening to a podcast by Jeff Goins, who had on as a guest speaker a controversial figure with local ties with whom I am familiar. This speaker was encouraging the listener to identify the natural rhythms in their life to find the time of the day that we are at our best and use those times to accomplish the things that to me would be the most fulfilling. His premise, by creating open space, I could actually do more in less time because the things that demanded the most from me are met with the part of the day when I had the right kind of energy to give. His objective was not to advance yet another time management technique so I can do more, instead he was advocating that doing less can release creative energy in a powerful way. In the end, it’s about finding the right part of the day to engage the things that give my life the most meaning.
He planted a seed; a thought to consider in those early morning hours when sleep eludes me. Who knows, I may find out that the 4-6:30 am time slot is the part of the day that I am at my best and the most creative but I have been sleeping through it all these years. It certainly would explain the clarity, or the absence thereof, as it relates to a few of my posts.
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Al and his faithful sidekick, Ivy the wonder pup.