There’s a number of ways you could describe me these past two months. ‘Tired,’ though, may be the most consistently accurate one.
Taking hard classes, being in leadership positions, taking care of college apps and still trying to have some semblance of a life isn’t easy. And it’s definitely been wearing me down since August. For the most part, though, I’m fortunate to usually have enough energy within me to make it and push through to the next day of the grind.
Key word: usually. There actually has been one enemy that has threatened my productivity more than any other. No, it’s not a hard class. It’s not even the stress of a particular college or my most time-consuming extracurricular. It’s an old friend and someone who helped me for a long, long time. It’s my bed.
Understandable, right? But it’s really hard to capture the effect it can have on me. I’m feeling alive, full of energy and ready to do the three hours of work I have ahead of me. Then I want to be comfortable, so I sit in bed for a bit and get some blankets on. Fast forward maybe half an hour, and my laptop’s still open — but I’m fast asleep.
The wave of tiredness that hits me is unlike anything else. Through experience, I’ve learned, it’s not even doing tiring or busy things that makes me want to sleep. As long as I stay away from the bed, I can probably stay up for 24 hours straight. I can wake up early and spend the whole day studying and working and exercising and I won’t feel tired. Then, as soon as I just touch my bed, I’m on my way to being out like a light.
It’s been a slow process of realization, but eventually, I decided I finally needed to take action against the number one threat to getting my work done. Too many mornings, I had woken up to realize what had happened just a few hours ago.
At first, it was just waiting to get in bed a little longer. And I did notice some improvement, just not enough. Especially on long nights, even getting in a couple hours before I needed to sleep meant that I was waking up at seven in the morning covered in sweat and with assignments still left to do.
The next step in the process was ditching my bed altogether, and refusing to get near it until I had a critical mass of work done. This, as it turns out, ended up working far better. Usually, I could make it through the last task or two before the inevitable wave of exhaustion washed over me.
The couch is now my new “comfy” place, but I even have to be careful there as to not allow myself to get too comfortable, lest I start falling asleep again. Otherwise, you’ll find me working at my desk and absolutely not looking behind me, because that’s where my bed is.
And now that I reflect on this change, I’ve kind of realized that the bed has actually been part of the problem the whole time. I just hadn’t had a year yet that pushed my sleep to the brink quite like this year has. A part of me now wishes I had made this change earlier.
I’ll see how much this is going to help me going forward, but I’m pretty sure not falling asleep every third night will be pretty helpful as my college deadlines really start to ramp up. For now, my bed has been defeated in this battle.
I very much look forward, though, to Christmas break. As I finally get an escape from school and as my last college deadlines show up in the rearview mirror, I’ll be able to reconcile with my beloved bed again. Then I’ll let it win the war.