Sleeping Beauty Never had a 9 to 5 or WiFi

As I get older, I totally understand why people choose sleep over socializing. We are just too damn tired and being an adult is really hard these days, especially if you’re a millennial. I literally have to think of 5 different things just for my skincare routine, so just imagine how exhausting it is to live life. I wanted to start this piece similarly to recipes online where you get the backstory of the recipe when all you want to know is if it was 1 teaspoon or 1 tablespoon of paprika. Luckily for you, this is a short story and ad free.

For starters, I have had sleep troubles since I can remember. Primarily difficulty falling asleep and frequently waking up because I am such a light sleeper. I will literally hear a baby’s first breath 10 miles down the road and I’m awake. I also frequently stress dream, which means I am tossing and turning and never feel like I have a good nights rest. So as you can imagine, this leads to feeling pretty fatigued during the day and I am not as productive as I could be. Let’s just say I have enjoyed many “lazy days” and can count on my fingers the times I got up and ran in the morning for fun.

So, how do I survive being a full-time worker who also loves to maintain a pretty active social life? Well, I have tried many things. For starters, I have tried the frequent recommendation of melatonin. This is pretty helpful at times and certainly makes me drowsy. However, I either have really weird dreams where I am running as fast as I can in quicksand from a demon child or I wake up even groggier than if I had not taken it. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation unless I literally have no plans the next day so I can sleep in.

I have also tried things such as sound machines and apps on your phone that play a meadow or the ocean. That’s cute and all, but not super helpful for someone that is thinking about their whole life plan before bed. I will be in bed on a Monday night pre-planning my Saturday cheat meal and then quickly jump to all the tasks I have to complete the next day. So as nice as the ocean sounds, it merely becomes the new soundtrack to my overwhelming thoughts.

Other things that come to mind are healthy eating and working out to aid sleep. There is definitely some merit to this because I was more active this past year and I felt more tired at bedtime on the days I worked out. Also, the same with healthy eating and reducing caffeine intake after 3PM. I noticed more overall energy the next day that I believe nutrition factored into this. Paired with some warm nighttime chamomile tea this was a nice combo to set me up for sleep. On the other hand, as great of a lifestyle this is, I am just not always consistent. Sometimes I want to binge watch a show, eat a pizza, have some wine and live my life. Those type of days tend to win my mental battle over a sad salad and cardio. So being that I’m not the most consistently healthy person (which I like to believe is the general norm) it makes for an inconsistent sleep schedule.

As I said earlier, I like to maintain a social life and that tends to involve weekend cocktails. Sometimes I have my weekend cocktails during the week, but that’s beside the point. What I am trying to say is that my social life completely derails my sleep schedule. I want to prioritize rest and at the same time it is so much fun to go out. I can find myself having FOMO (fear of missing out) and this year I want to embrace my inner Sleeping Beauty. For now, I definitely do not see myself giving up alcohol long term but willing to make changes in order to put my wellness first. This is why, I have decided to do Dry January to really jump start my wellness goals and focus on recharging my batteries.

Although cutting out alcohol this month is helpful, I actually decided to make another change that I will make as my wellness resolution. This has been the most consistent helpful and yet problematic coping skill for sleep that I want to change. The only thing that seems to help me fall asleep faster without fail is watching TV before bed. I usually watch TV on my phone, so my screen time looks like I have never spent any time outside. I generally only fall asleep to Friends or How I Met Your Mother and I am probably quoting it in my sleep because I know it so well. When I go on trips I have it downloaded for plane rides and for sleep at hotel rooms. I find myself really struggling without it and have noticed a huge dependency on it.

You might be wondering why I want to change something that helps me fall asleep so easily. For starters, the theme music to every TV show is always 10 octaves higher than the show itself. So I always wake up to "SO NO ONE TOLD YOU LIFE WAS GONNA BE THIS WAY (CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP)" as if there were a fire burning outside. So my circadian rhythm is consistently disrupted. Furthermore, I find myself being half asleep because it feels like I am actually watching the show and it will intertwine in my dreams. So even though I am getting more sleep than if I did not watch TV before bed, I am still feeling fatigued the next day and coffee can only do so much.

That being said, I have decided to give up watching TV before bed as a way to build healthier sleep patterns. I have not done this sooner because I know the first week will be very tiring due to the adjustment. This is true when you give up anything you have become dependent on and I have not been motivated to be exhausted. I now realize this is important because I do not want to keep my partner up at night or my travel buddies. I would also like to have some quality natural sleep as I retrain my brain to not rely on sitcoms.

For me, data is very important because I like to know if something is working or not. So in order to see if eliminating TV successfully leads to better quality sleep, I will need to track my progress. I decided to measure this a few ways. First, I will be able to track quantitative data on my smart watch. This keeps track of the hours I am asleep, the amount of time spent awake and provides an overall sleep score. I will be mindful that the first week may show lower numbers than desired. The goal is short term sacrifice for long term results!

I also believe qualitative data is just as important to track. This includes my overall level of fatigue the next day and mood. Ironically, I have a Friends weekly planner and it would be so easy to just jot down my fatigue level on a scale from 0-10 (with 10 being I am too tired to even order take-out). I also want to track my emotions as a bonus to see the correlation and impact that my sleeping patterns have on my mood. I would predict that if my sleep hygiene was improved I would be happier and have more energy. This would translate to productivity the next day and I would feel even happier that I accomplished my daily goals. In other words, I would be more inclined to cook a healthy meal instead of making a TV dinner (no pun intended) which would just add to overall wellness.

In a nutshell, I feel that cutting out TV as a coping skill will have a positive effect on my overall rest and relaxation. Even though there may be many nights where I stay up with my thoughts about my to-do list I will never follow, I know that one day I will get bored of myself and will fall asleep. I am excited to challenge myself and to prioritize sleep as it has been neglected for a long time. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi “Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I’m reborn.” This will be my anthem on my journey to a relaxed mind and body.