No, I’m not talking about a bride’s wedding night – rather, the importance of a good night’s sleep.
I don’t get them – good nights of sleep, I mean. I am too enthralled with the Internet, with all the jobs and ideas I have floating around in my head, and I stay awake until the wee hours of the morning. Usually I get about five hours of sleep a night – but to feel truly rested, I would need seven hours every night.
I think the most important part of that sentence up there is the last two words: every night.
Articles about good night’s sleep have been done. We all have a general idea of why we should get enough sleep – it affects your weight, your mood, and how your body functions. But just for kicks, I thought I’d trek around the Internets and see what great tidbits I could pull from other articles and gather them here.
- Sleep keeps your heart healthy. I honestly completely didn’t know that. I have some history of heart disease in my family, so my attention is perked, here.
- Naps make you smarter. Oh yeah! I love to nap – and maybe that’s just because I don’t get enough sleep at night. But going out to my car during my lunch hour for a twenty minute snooze is definitely one of my favorite things.
- Sleep deprivation (even in the most modest amounts) can interfere with how efficiently the body regulates the release of cortisol, which plays a significant role in hunger, stress and appetite. Okay, so I’m seriously hoping that getting to bed early and waking early to do some Wii Fit Yoga could drastically help my weight-loss goals.
- Somewhat related to that, studies have found that people who don’t get enough sleep often indulge in excessive sneaking [sic]. Okay, well, that is actually exactly me. I was waiting to finish my soda before I got myself a bowl of ice cream. That’s after constantly eating the M&M’s from a coworker’s desk all day, having a huge lunch and then still eating the chips and candy corn I brought from home, and having a cookie before I even ate supper. It looks like I get shift some blame for that from weak willpower to sleep deficiency. Woohoo!
- Sleep may prevent cancer. Well, I’m honestly skeptical about this one. I mean, really? But hey, I love to sleep. This would be an awesome benefit of one of my favorite activities.
There are so many things that I want to do in my free time that I neglect my health (by getting enough sleep) in order to get things done. That’s no good. Last night I sketched out a “perfect day” plan, and started a list of all the things I really want to do in the two hours between when the kids and DH go to sleep and when I should be going to bed. I’m all up for treating this like one of my son’s activities, to schedule particular activities for particular days, so I don’t try to cram it all in a hodgepodge fashion, but rather give quality time to each activity. (Come to think of it, that’s a good idea for food, too…tsk.)
Photo by Zsuzsanna Kilián
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. Just [write]!”
-Phil Hodgen, BHB
This is exactly what I needed to hear today, and yesterday, really. I am obviously not in a position to need to pour quite as much effort as Mr. Hodgen did to his particular topic blog, but it is a good sample of what your dedicated efforts can bring you.
I have been watching a particular agent at my office do exactly what Mr. Hodgen just did. Intense effort for a relatively small return. Paying out a not insignificant sum of money for a campaign that has the potential to pay out tenfold, and most probably more. If she gains paying clients from just 0.3% of the mailing sent, it will pay for the entire endeavor, plus the next five just like it. If she received a 2% response, she could earn more than I do in a year. 5%? The one marketing campaign could pay her fees, her mortgage, her utilities, all of any expense she might have for a year. And that’s on the low end on both sale price and commission for our current market. Imagine if she had some kickass, world changing sales?
Whether or not I have a good idea today, the most important thing is to keep working towards my goal. Write, even if it sucks. Write, even if it’s off topic. Write, even if nobody reads.
Obviously I don’t have success yet in this blogosphere to give any credit to my claims. I haven’t backed things up with six references from other successful bloggers, although I’m sure they’re out there. But I’ve seen it work. Mr. Hodgen saw it work. And if I could get more people in my office to try it, they would see it work as well.
And I will see it work.
I’m blocked tonight. Why am I blocked tonight? I really don’t understand.
I wanted to write about Motivation, but I’m having a hard time finding any. I did find an article I really liked on the subject at A List Apart: Staying Motivated. (I often find interesting articles at this website, but until hadn’t actually added them to my feed reader. Crisis averted – I subscribed today.)
My absolute favorite tip was to build a creative den. I thought about where I do most of my writing, TV watching, and web surfing – a not-terribly-comfortable-after-two-hours rocker recliner. That’s not a den. I think I would like a separate space in the room just for me. DH has the desktop computer on a makeshift desk, and soon he will get a real desk for the computer. So where will I work? There are no extra rooms for me, and at this point there aren’t even any empty walls. There is a very long, narrow closet…
Of course, picking a Den would require space that isn’t unusable at certain times during the day – or night. For example, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to set up my space in our bedroom. DH goes to bed with the kids at 8 p.m. (tonight being a notable exception – he just went up), and is a very light sleeper. I wouldn’t be able to work with him sleeping, thereby only giving me time to write on the weekends when I’m not at my parents house doing laundry or driving my son to Boy Scout things or taking both kids to church. Oh, wait, I don’t have any time that’s not doing those things.
When my husband gets his desk, I will evaluate the remaining space in the room. Perhaps I will be able to create a Den out of what his new desk has displaced. I can set up my sewing machine, and have an outlet for my laptop, and keep a book on the side for when I’m waiting for my laptop to kick up, and that little piece of wall can be my one-and-only creative space. A bit of wall would be ideal, so I could put up sticky notes and cover the wallpaper noise.
Staying motivated. Repetition. Doing it so often it’s simply habit, and not doing it leaves a void.
In Nicki World, there isn’t a lot of cooking going on that doesn’t start from a box. Hamburger Helper is frequently about as far as we extend ourselves. Frozen dinners in bags are my friend.
Tonight was an exception. When I was a child, my parents made this really awesome soup. Cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions (yuck), and kielbasa sausage, all boiled together with maybe a bit of salt and other random Parent Ingredients.
My favorite parts, of course, were the carrots, potatoes and sausage (especially the sausage). Which is why my Boiled Dinner Remix is a bit…scant on the ingredients. Here’s what we had for dinner tonight.
1 bag baby carrots
1 kielbasa sausage
1 box instant rice
Boil carrots and sausage. Make rice according to directions on package. Serve carrots and sausage over rice.
While it was pretty, and DH thanked me for making supper, he did say it was rather bland. Well, that’s probably because I’m not much of a cook. There wasn’t any salt or butter to be found anywhere near the stuff. Seasoning has never been my strong suit. Either too much, or not enough, as in this case.
Maybe next time if I add some salt…