Welcome to the tenth post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012.
Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone.
If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com.

Post #10: Sleep

Sleep has rarely come easy for me, and now, as tonight’s deadline for bed has been and gone, I’m still here writing. Each night, I try every thing under the sun to not acknowledge my bedtime. But what part of this is because my body clock tells me we have hours before I’ll naturally be inclined to sleep, and what part of this is my 6-year-old inner self not wanting to be hemmed in by “boring nonsense” like a responsible bedtime?

To be the very best I can be, my body requires sleep. I know that, but I just don’t want to sleep. There’s plenty more interesting things I’d rather be doing than looking at my eyelids.

At my work, there’s little flexibility in terms of time. My core hours are roughly 8am – 5:30pm, and that’s just the way the world works. Unfortunately, those hours are not conducive to my circadian rhythm. I am a ‘B’ person, meaning that I naturally rise late, but also work late. This rhythm naturally puts me to sleep at about 3am and wakes me up at 10am-ish. I’m not the only person to operate in an ‘A’ world, but I cannot continue to hit the hay at 2am and expect to be operating on all cylinders at 7. I am never truly switched on until an hour before lunch.

So if I were to start knuckling down and turning the lights off at a reasonable time (one I have associated with the elderly), I could start waking up more refreshed, even on an A schedule. It could improve my memory and reduce the foggy mind, and even be more emotionally balanced. Sleep is the time when your body recharges and repairs itself, so I imagine that getting a full night’s sleep could help my body in ways that are not necessarily obvious, such as physical health, and longevity.

I imagine that by making 8-hours sleep a priority in 2012 won’t affect my productivity heatmap, but it may just leave me with smaller bags under my eyes than Keith Richards. Fingers crossed. It’ll just have to start tomorrow…