Inktober 2019 Day 21

Naps: Good For The Soul. 

Maybe Not So Good  For The Circadian Rhythm:

Inktober 2019 Day 21

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Maybe.

I think the research is fairly much in agreement that daytime napping is counterproductive for people who have trouble sleeping at night. 

But this is an easy bit of science for me to embrace, since I am a lousy napper. I haven’t really had more than a handful of intentional naps since the total sleep derangement of nursing and caring for babies. 

Granted, I was so extraordinarily sleep-deprived for most of my adult life that I could fall asleep on the subway, while standing, or doing practically anything besides riding a bike in traffic. (Thus my five years of biking the kids everywhere in New York)  But these were the “micro-sleeps,” the brief hypnagogic jerks of exhaustion. Not intentional, restful naps.

When I try to nap,  first I can’t fall asleep unless moderately ill...and god forbid I should succeed, because someone will immediately wake me up to help with math homework or to feed the starving, or to apply cream to the itchy. And on the rare occasion that I do actually sleep,  I wake up feeling worse, more disoriented, more peevish....more tired.

Therefore I am mostly a mildly disgruntled nap spectator. I don’t think it’s great for sleep hygiene, but that doesn’t stop me from being jealous of the capacity.