In Bed with Television

Yesterday’s inbox gave me a subject line filled with ‘Sleep Deprivation Study’. Très appropriate since I both ‘don’t sleep’ and ‘have an email address for people to send me links to a world outside the cubicle’. The email took me to FuturePundit which deals in “Future technological trends and their likely effects on human society, politics, and evolution”, it’s always a good time. Specifically, this article wandered around the idea of Sleep Deficit and the inability to recover with only one massive weekend dose. More generally, it Jeopardy’d the answer “I am Jack’s unhinged thoughts” with “What is, all that stuff written just below that pundit link?” The article is definitely worth a hey-how-are-ya, especially if you are interested in the mysteries of the human body’s rechargeable battery, or if you ever Sleep.

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/007378.html


In my world it’s the latest fad, it’s the new magic elixir, it’s the cure for anything and everything; it’s all I see. And I believe it. I don’t get enough sleep and the only thing worse than the lack of sleep I get is the lack of action I take to get more sleep. Lately I’ve done better and I’ve never been as bad as ‘less than 4 hours a night’, but it’s hard, it’s throw-a-moody kind of hard.



Basically what I’ve come up with is that I need to sacrifice things I like in order to create more QT with the pillow. It could be the TV time that they’re talking about, it could be reading before bed, it could be anything from a round of chit-chattery to the post work work-out, maybe it could be cutting back on anything that keeps me out of the house passed 10pm. I don’t know yet. What I do know is that it can’t be is something I dislike. And this is where the problem lies; to find sleep I need to postpone a lot of Like in life in order to squeeze in all the Dislike I’m supposed to take care of. I don’t like it. The only way to ensure that I can fit in all that Like that I do like and that I’m so used to is to skip out on the early to bed, dislike the Dislike more, and continue to talk about how I don’t get enough sleep. BUT, if a little extra Like in the evening means that the Dislike is even worse because I can’t stay awake or that I’m only operating at 60% during all that Like I like so much, the trade off isn’t worth it. And that’s where I’m at right now. I’m tired of being so tired that I’m just ‘getting by’, it’s exhausting. All it takes is one good dose of Enough-Sleep and things become very clear – sleep is gooooooooooooood. Watch out Late-Night-Guy, your days are numbered.

As for this fool who’s cancelled his cable and unplugged his TV and ‘no longer misses it’, well La-Dee-Freakin-Da, how Zen/Buddhist/Stupid-of-you. When will people stop blaming TV for everything? People don’t kill people, TVs kill People, right? Unbelievable. If you like TV, watch it, if you don’t, then just don’t watch, but don’t hate on those who do. The haters need to stop selling fear and need to stop trying to convince the world that not watching TV has given them some sort of superpower. Be convinced of this, your superpower is the power of being a big idiot. The whole TV is the worst thing since Ever is ridiculous, it’s like candy or oxygen or hugs; ‘moderation’ is the cliché of choice. “I don’t get enough sleep, so I’m going to go all Office-Space on my TV”. How about “I don’t exercise enough, I’m going to slash my car tires”? Or maybe “I have a headache, I’m going to cut my head off”? Sound good? Issue resolved? No? Oh, sorry, I thought we were just smashing together random events that make no sense and solving all the problems of the world in the most indirect way possible.

And I pause to breathe and take a ten-count.

If you are doing a whole bunch of other non-TV related things with your after-work time, and then decide that you want some TV, and then wake up the next morning and are tired, and then conclude that TV has performed robbery on your sole and broken your trust, AND you send it to the corner for a talking to and a time out, well fine, your choice, just don’t talk to me about it, unless it’s during a commercial break.

To summarize: I like sleep, I like TV, I want to have my cake and eat it too. I also like cake.

You’ve been Hi-Jacked!