Magic Seven Hours

You hear and see it everywhere – where beauty and health are concerned, nothing less than a minimum of 7 hours a night sleep are mandatory.  Well that’s all fine if you can get it, but what if you can’t? Does that mean these people will just have to accept the fate of growing old prematurely and dying a young death? Sure it’s great telling people who purposely stay awake all hours of the night they shouldn’t be doing it as it will have dramatically ill effects, but what about the rest of us who try everything to get this magic 7 hours and simply fail. It makes me stress even more.

 I can’t recall the last time I had a deep 7 hour sleep. I would truly buy this if it did come in a bottle. (what am I talking about! I did buy it once in the form of a makeup that promised the same effect!). I have finally decided to face facts, that contrary to popular belief, my body may not require 7 hours. In fact it’s only when I stop thinking and stressing about how few hours I’ve had that I actually start to feel fine. I’ve noticed that if I don’t count the actual number of hours sleep I have had, the better I feel for it.  So now each day I accept that my body will rest when it needs to and if I’ve done everything in my power in order to sleep, then perhaps I have had my quota and should stop stressing about it.

Wanting 7 hours leads to panic. Panic of getting to bed too late, and panic once you are in bed of needing to fall asleep in enough time before you have to get up. This leads to clock watching. It’s amazing how fast time goes by when you can’t sleep. Hours pass by as if they are purposely tormenting you. Before you know it you have 2 hours before you have to get up. And it’s almost impossible to sleep then. But sure enough, just before the alarm clock is due to go off you feel that window of opportunity for sleep. So typical. So ironic. So unfair.

Clock watching is bad. Hence I have banned clocks from my room. Particularly ticking or iridescent red lights you find on many alarm clocks. It’s so rare that I am asleep at the time an alarm goes off I don’t even bother with one.

On the downside, if I have an important meeting to go and I don’t set an alarm, this too has the power to keep me awake as I’m afraid I’ll sleep in. So like everything, there may be exception to the rule. Perhaps on these days the best thing to do is to have a silent, non florescent alarm clock on hand.