Okay, I finally got this. I solved the riddle! I’ve been exploring slumber for so long that finally, I’m able to formulate it super briefly.
Slumber is a very complicated project our bodies do. It’s the most valuable body process in our lives, apart from processing oxygen.
Well, and pumping blood. And other things body does all the time.
But those other processes, we cannot control them. Body wins. We cannot hold our breath till we are dead. We can change the global state for that to be unrealistic, e.g. jumping into a very deep water, so we would be physically unable to breath. Still, the body would do its best to actually do exactly that, breath.
This process, it takes our outie conscious self to take action. We have all the power in the world over sleep. We can punish ourselves with sleep deprivation for as long as we will.
But should we?
I did that, so much that I’m deeply regretting all the attempts right now. However, even knowing all this — the sleep deprivation issues — is not enough.
Hence, I’m trying to understand the process, to find ways to explain myself that whatever else I’m about to do isn’t as valuable as the sleep I’m missing.
It’s just so difficult for me to not miss that time frame of getting to sleep when I need that, at 8 pm.
External forces, primarily my wife and kids, do not allow me to be fully myself. I might work on that, and I will, but it takes so much energy that I’m constantly low on.
When I’m late to sleep, it’s too difficult to relax, even if melatonin is saved and no white lamps are being forced onto my eyes.
Most times I’m getting to sleep at midnights. It’s only recently I fully realised that midnight is actually middle of the fucking night,
20 + 4
So, the sleep is a complicated and very valuable project for our bodies. Here I am, lying down in my bed, my family is asleep now, but I’m not. But I want to, and cannot relax enough to release my consciousness. Still, I’m feeling my body started some processes it needs desperately.
That’s the point when I’m realising, what would I expect? I showed up to the project in the middle of its cycle. Being unprepared. Everyone else is working and working hard and long. They’re tired already.
That’s the metaphor for the time from 8 PM to midnight being most restorative, as of compared to later hours of night.
So, they are working very hard, they are having their little lunch break — so to say — already. And here I am, only showing up. Not even being prepared (relaxed enough). Expecting I’d join the project with them. As an equal. That’s nonsense. I’m not their equal here, I’m too late to get a fully restorative sleep session today. The body started its work without my help, and it’s me who’d get punished in the first place.
All I can do is to join them the next time properly. Which is the very next day, thankfully.
But will I actually use the opportunity?