So, what happened yesterday. I didn’t do much, in fact it disappeared in something of a blur. A bluntened blur. My girlfriend finally found this blog, though she says that she hasn’t read anything (apart from the piece on Marienbad which we had discussed the previous day).
I don’t mind who reads this thing, really I don’t. I wouldn’t publish it online if I did. But it does help your writing when you aren’t constantly worrying about who is reading what you write and what they think of it. Which readers particularly bother me? Work people and family, mainly. People with whom I tend to repress parts of my personality. People who don’t encourage any intellectual or social exuberance — for what is a blog if it doesn’t have intellectual or social exuberance?
Anyhow, I’ve recently been conducting experiments into sleep and the quality of consciousness. It is easy to blame poor quality sleep for the poor quality of your consciousness when, in actual fact, the way you live your waking life is to blame.
There’s a sleep guru who recommends a minimum of 9 hours sleep per night. Other reports suggest that people who sleep a mere 7 hours per night live longer and healthier. It is confusing. And high achievers in business are united by one thing — their ability to do without sleep. It makes you wonder whether the secret to success isn’t just to be able to operate at a fairly high level whilst feeling overwhelmingly knackered.
The aforementioned sleep guru appealed to pre-civilizational sleep patterns — a golden age when we had no candle or electric light, rising and falling with the sun. He recommended going to sleep at 9.30pm and waking at 6.30am. This sounds fine, but is impossible for anyone who has any kind of social life.
Sleepologists always recommend blocking out all light and getting a good mattress. Well, I recently bought new light-blocking curtains and bought a memory foam mattress and know now conclusively that it doesn’t make all that much difference. It is the amount of sleep you get that stops you from feeling tired. In my experience.
Perhaps the greatest drain on your resources and the reason you feel tired is your lifestyle. Who can wonder that people are exhausted when they are stuck in offices, chained to desks and unable to breathe fresh air? Then they go home to vegetate in front of the television. As such, I’m going to make a concerted attempt to live better — starting with doing more interesting things in the evening. Relaxing into sleep, not working until the last moment.
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