Sleep

I think we give sleep a bad rap. I remember in my twenties in particular, how I loved to cozy into my down-filled bed by 10pm, looking forward to 8 or 10 hours of sleep. I never felt odd because I put myself to bed at 10pm while friends might party til 3am. I tried staying up a few times but it never was fun and I found it difficult to stay awake.

My work life and responsibilities were intense at that time, that sleeping was a true pleasure and get away for me, more so than going to a bar or entertaining friends. Maybe my work was so full of people and managing them, that sleep was a quiet, easy way to escape it all and be good to myself.

Sleep seems to be something many people feel is a waste of time, or a weakness to admit they need more than a few hours a day. Western society revers being busy at work, home and play, so that leaves little time for sleep. The culture acts like we can function well on 4 or 6 hours a sleep a day. Do you want to fly with a pilot who has had 4 hours sleep or a restless night?

Sleep has a true healing aspect to it. Sleep is actually the time for the body to do some cellular clean up helping to rejuvenate what has been depleted during our active/awake time. I'm no scientist so I don't have the terminology for it, but haven't you noticed that people who say they are deep sleepers have healthy looking skin? So the less sleep we get the less healing time we get.

And naps get a bad rap too in this culture, as though it is a lazy thing to do or avoidance behavior. I guess napping could be used for some of those things, but a nap can be a healthy way to recharge, or fend off some bug one can feel coming. Or like siestas, naps in the latin cultures, they are the way to deal with midday heat, so peoples' work and meals resume after the rest period. Shame may be what surrounds acknowledging to others that we take a nap, or sleep in, or go to bed early so don't call after 9pm, that kind of thing. What a funny thing to be feel funny about, huh?

I know my 87 year old mother has a glass of sherry at lunch nowadays. Often she falls asleep on the couch. If I come into her apartment she'll spring up from the couch to a sitting position as though I caught her doing something naughty. She is active , and can still get a lot accomplished in a day. Taking a nap mid-way through her day seems a healthy option, yet she's still not acting comfortable with it. Maybe she did see naps and late morning sleeping as lazy or weak in her earlier years, and now it is hard to adjust. I'm not sure.

 And how many sleep medications are advertised these days? (Enough to put us to sleep, or at least numb us. ) Clearly we have trouble sleeping and enjoying our sleep. Our days are inundated with demands on our time and energy almost non-stop if we allowed it. So at night, brains must be racing, which often leads to worry, which rarely leads to easy sleep. Yet sleep is natural to us humans and we used to be so good at it. Luxuriate in it. What isn't natural is to override the sleep the body needs so our body, mind and spirit function optimally. It is a beautiful thing, a long wonderful night of sleep. So be wild and unconventional. Take back the duvet (and get that TV out of your bedroom). 

Enjoy the Zzzzzz's. 

Digital Sabbatical

A local magazine wrote an article wondering if some of us have a fear of missing out (FOMO) if we aren’t connected all the time online or by phone. Some said they do, and are on Facebook, twitter, linked in, skype, emails, cell and landlines, blog, text, even still fax and a host of other things checking all the time, in their fear of missing out.

Missing out on what exactly? Seeing baby pictures on someone’s facebook who has 1000 friends? Who has a 1000 friends really? Do they buy these friends presents on their birthday, and invite them over for cups of tea to chat? If someone I care about has baby pictures they want me to see, I trust they’ll send them to me in an email. Send them to me specifically. But that is how I am wired. I like relevant communication and face to face time with people. Online tools can assist in keeping communication going, but it isn’t in place of meaningful human connection. Quite honestly, no matter what I read online in terms of emails or on listservs, unless I have met you, or get to meet you, or you've been recommended by someone I trust, we won’t be doing business together. 

And I can’t say the online communication world is making us more wise or clear to make good decisions for our business or personal life. We just seem to get inundated with more and more communication and gadgets to buy and learn how to use. Then sometimes we are on the receiving end of others’ poor choices of messages they send. Often redundant or self-serving rather than a good use of my time. My online access is directly related to people I know or are in my professional world. I don’t cast a wide net trying to bring in a random connection.  

I do have several email accounts, websites I administer, listservs I've joined,  2 blogs I attend to erratically, and I’m on linkedin but inactive. I haven’t joined Facebook or Twitter. I don’t have a cell phone. I haven't texted. I do have a lonely, dusty fax only my banker seems to need me to use.

 Do I feel I’m missing out by not doing more, being MORE accessible? No. I feel grateful to have gained clarity of what I need to use, when to use it, why I’m using it and how best to use it for my needs. As I spend much time in my office, I don’t have a cell phone. I like to plan meetings, and I like others to value our time so that if we plan a meeting they are aware if they want to change anything they need to do it before I leave the office. That seems fair notice.  

Too often we seem to use the accessibility of everyone by cell phone as a means for a spontaneous life of work and play. That has decided advantages, but a few weaknesses too. It means less advance planning and commitment to a plan which in turn affects using time well and being productive.

 Many of us creatives have to take blocks of time to focus on our projects away from the online, digital world.  Otherwise we wouldn’t create but just be distracted by the array of communication tools full of demands and bleeps but often little meaning for our day to day. 

So take a Digital Sabbatical, or Digital Sabbath . Put pen to paper sometime, and see how it feels. If your hand still works. Write a letter and mail it. You’ll surprise someone I feel sure. In a good way. Maybe two people. The sender and the addressee. 

Laughing Yoga

I have lots of quirky thoughts, or ways of looking at the world. Some of that I suppose is being a Canadian living in America. The longer I am here, the more quirky things appear to me, and the larger the distance seems to get from what I see and how others see it. Or maybe that distance is shrinking. Certainly my eyesight is getting worse, so maybe I'm not a good judge of these things anymore. 

Naturally you want an example. What's quirky to me you ask? Sometimes, quirky to me is situational, a moment with friends, and I'll see a picture in my head triggered...sort of...by what they say, and then I describe it out loud. Which in this writing is hard to translate. It all is in the moment. But to me, it is my humor bone, and hilarious. I never thought about those pictures in my head that formulate as being a quirky event. It just seemed funny, and usually others found it funny too. That part of me didn't go away as I got older, but it got submerged as those around me seemed less inclined to laugh. Not just with me regarding my jokes, but just less inclined to laugh, or see the mirth in something. (Mirth, isn't that a fine word?)

So quirky topics to me are things like being curious about people different from myself, doing something I wouldn't have invented or thought to do, like  going to a yoga class in order to practice the physical act of laughing. Not with humor, or telling jokes as part of the practice, but rather participants emulate the act of laughing. To me that is a waste. I like humor, being delighted and laughing out loud. But to just imitate the mechanics of a laugh, even if it offers some health benefits, I'd much rather laugh from true delight and surprise than to force myself to laugh, tricking my body into some action. I like the real deal rather than imitation. Always. Plus I am funny, and for decades I attended yoga class and I can tell you most of my teachers were humorless. When faced with many butts in downward facing dog, you can be assured I had a few jokes to share. But sadly this was before “Laughing Yoga” so I was reprimanded many a time. Sigh. I guess I was just ahead of my time. 

There is humor in everything if we just choose to be open to the fun of it. As a friend said, we need to keep our “humor channel” turned on, as laughter is a good medicine, and we can access it all the time. Hopefully that doesn't sound quirky, because soon quirky will be the new mainstream I feel sure.