Get more sleep

When people complain about their insomnia as if it were a badge of honor, I find I have nothing to contribute to the discussion. I never have trouble sleeping. Waking up from a deep sleep, yes, but never falling asleep. If I sound smug it’s because I am. I am a virtuoso at sleep. I can fall asleep anywhere, and fast. When I was in college I would get on the bus, find a window seat, lean against the glass, and lose consciousness. Yes, I was one of those annoying passengers who lurched and swayed with every motion of the bus, occasionally crashing into a fellow passenger. If I ever drooled on you I apologize, and I hope my saliva did not eat through fabric, or worse, bone. Terrible when that happens.

As is the case with truly gifted sleepers, I never missed my stop: a minute before the bus arrived at my destination, I would suddenly snap out of my nap, rise from my seat, and make my way to the door. On long flights I fall asleep at take-off – the second the plane leaves the ground I am in R.E.M. phase. If I’m lucky I will remain unconscious until the plane lands, opening my eyes (and mouth) just long enough for a groggy meal. The only times I cannot fall asleep immediately are when I have to wake up early, and when I am romantically afflicted, which most people call "being in love," but which I think of as a pleasant by-product of my DNA demanding replication. In the former case, the thought that I will not get my full nine hours’ sleep – What, you get by on eight?! – keeps me awake and constantly checking the clock to see how much sleep time I have left. In the latter instance, I cannot stop thinking of the unfortunate object of my delusions. My brain literally won’t shut up, although given some of my choices it would seem that the brain had shut down completely. (This is why my afflictions don’t last: if you think about someone constantly, he will soon become boring. Only the truly fascinating can hold up under relentless contemplation.)

Despite my expertise at sleeping, there are others far more proficient than I am. For instance, a friend of mine has a talent for sleep that is positively narcoleptic. He can go from full wakefulness to deep sleep in no seconds flat. He hurls himself at a couch and is snoring before his face hits the throw pillows. And then, some years ago, I heard of a young person who always fell asleep at the movies, no matter how riveting or how loud the sound effects. He snored through The Matrix – not the sequels, but the original movie. He could not have been tired: his well-connected family had secured him a decorative job that only required him to show up at the office. As far as I could tell, the strain of breathing, circulating blood, and digesting food was too much for his nervous system to handle, so it shut off all the functions that were not absolutely necessary to keep him alive.

Sleep is a vastly underrated activity. It IS an activity, even if we appear to be doing nothing. While we sleep our tissues repair themselves, our livers reconstitute, our systems reboot and, perhaps most importantly, we dream. If we do not dream, we go bonkers. Consider that famous, no, infamous individual who gets by on two hours’ sleep a night – I rest my case. Memories are bound during slumber, and lack of sleep leads to memory loss. Remember that insomnia plague in Garcia-Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude? The people of Macondo could not sleep, so they forgot everything, including what things were called. They had to nail labels to everything – "door," "window," and so on, or their entire lives would be erased from memory.

If you go without sleep your body will pay for it. I suspect writing gets done during sleep. In your waking hours you feed your brain information, which it processes in your sleep and reconfigures into interesting patterns. I am mystified at how sleeplessness and insomnia can be considered romantic: the dark circles under the eyes are only attractive if you are good-looking to begin with, and eyebags flatter no one. When friends complain that their lives are in shambles, I suggest that they get more sleep. Everything is clearer when your mind is well-rested. Solutions occur to you that you could not grasp when you were in a tizzy. Some wiseass, fancying himself cool, will no doubt retort, "I’ll sleep when I’m dead." Clearly lack of sleep is affecting his thought processes. You won’t sleep when you’re dead. You won’t even be.

Get more sleep. You’ll thank me for it.

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P.S. Thanks to all the readers who joined last week’s Book Quiz. The winners are: Loren Palero, Sherilyn Siy, Rhedd de Guzman, "Mon-Mon," and Chidmark Ramirez. They’ve been notified by e-mail, with instructions on how to claim their prizes from Anvil Publishing.