A long time ago (back in the early 90’s) I decided that I was spending too much time sleeping. I had a lot to do and I needed more time to do it. Over the years I’ve lived on less and less sleep, until there were nights last year that I was getting less than 4 hours of sleep. THAT’S NOT ENOUGH!
I know, a bunch of you told me that, but honestly, I can sit at my laptop until at least 2 a.m. without feeling drowsy. Why not take advantage of the extra hours in the day? The weird thing is that when I’m working at night on my computer, I never feel the normal feelings of being tired, no matter how late it gets. But at some point I hit the wall and my head starts buzzing and I can’t focus on what I’m doing. Every morning I wake up and read both of my blogs to make sure I didn’t post something that made me sound drunk. That’s not good, and I know that. I need to go to bed earlier.
A couple of weeks ago I ran across an article that explains everything. Some doctors think that the light from an iPad or laptop can keep the brain from secreting melatonin, which makes people sleep and helps regulate our internal sleep clocks. The bright light basically fools the brain into thinking it’s time to be awake. This makes sense in my case because when I’m using my laptop, I’m wide awake (like right now), but if I try to read, I feel sleepy after a few pages no matter what time it is.
It’s not easy, but I’m trying to shut the computer down by 12 most nights…I know that’s still pretty late but it’s much earlier than before. Baby steps, right?