So Much for Sleep

In case you're wondering why this may be the last week this blog ever has a new post 5 full days out of the week, read on. No, I'm not stopping, and no, I don't suspect I'll reduce it to 1 post a week, but I no longer plan to strive for something new each of the five days.



"I heard he was born in a mental institution, and he sleeps only one hour a night. He's a great man."

That might be my favorite quote from Fight Club. I don't know about the mental institution part, but great men such as Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, and Leonardo Da Vinci are all said to have slept extremely little. Like, 2-4 hours a night. A friend told me long ago he decided sleep was a waste of time, and I've seen the wisdom in that.

Yet, after seven months of sleeping just over 4 hours a night, I may have come near my limit. OK, not my limit. I could probably do this for the rest of my life, but it wouldn't be as long a life. I was unable to donate blood today because my hemoglobin was too low; I haven't found anything that suggests a direct link there, but I suspect it may be related. Frequent blood donations can reduce your hemoglobin (donating every 8 weeks for 2 years is frequent enough, I suppose), and my levels have been gradually decreasing every 8 weeks since my sleep has been so reduced. Donating blood is very important to me, for good reason. But not only that, I'm beginning to think I may, perhaps, be ever so slightly less great than Franklin and Newton. And I suspect the hemoglobin may be just the first thing to go if I don't make a change.

With the various demands of family, work, dogs who need walked (the highlight of my day), and my personal time, sleep was the thing I decided to cut. For several years I was sleeping 6 hours a night, with no ill effects. Curious readers may go back seven months in the blog to figure out why the change, but for a while I was unable to sleep much. And found I could get by on 4 hours. So I have, since then.

But now, I've decided something has to change. Among other things--like making 8 cups of coffee each day instead of 10, and walking the dogs at 9:00 p.m. instead of 10:30 p.m.--my personal time will have to be cut down. That will likely result in less time dedicated to sifting through promo e-mails, less time previewing them. Less time unzipping them, loading them into my iTunes, and correcting the fucking ALL CAPS names and such. Less time writing and formatting reviews, finding usable album art, finding embeddable sample songs and adding proper, consistent labels to each post.

I suspect there will still be at least three posts a week, spread out throughout the week and posted whenever they're ready instead of scheduled for 7:00 a.m. each weekday. So, now I'm going to rest a bit. See you next week.