Despite the findings of the entire medical community, I’ve come to the conclusion, or perhaps more accurately, the conviction, that sleep is a monumental waste of time.
Now you may think I’m full of shit on this one, and from the world in which you reside, you may be right.
But hear me out. I believe my logic is pretty sound.
Let’s say you manage to live to eighty years old.
Twenty four of those years or roughly a third will be spent sleeping, another twenty or so in learning institutions and the remainder, unless you’re a perma-student, will be spent trying to eek out a living.
Ultimately, you, right along with with your octogenarian cohorts will while the time away in some raisin ranch where you’ll ruminate over how fast life passed all of you by, completely oblivious to the fact that 24 of those years were spent sleeping.
Well fuck that. Like Thoreau suggested, I’m marching (really plodding) to the beat of a different drummer—namely, Albert Einstein.
Using Einstein’s postulate of how time slows the faster one moves through it and connecting the dots between ones not sleeping being tantamount to their moving slower through time, I deductively reasoned how (assuming I’ll live to eighty) I can recapture at least 10, maybe 15 of those years.
I stopped sleeping three months ago.
The results are kind-of a mixed bag, but overall, Einstein was right. Time does slow down.
Here are my findings thus far…
Initially, I was tired and grumpy the first few days, but that soon gave way to a heightened sense of awareness. Friends and family captioned this as my being a bit ‘jumpy’.
I suppose one could argue this ‘jumpiness’ may have been the result of my central nervous system freaking out, but I see it as the direct result of their continuing to move quickly through time while I on the other hand managed to slow considerably, perhaps giving them the misguided belief I’m still moving quickly, when in all actuality I’m not.
I’m barely moving at all.
After a week or so, the jumpiness subsided and I began to see how Einstein was right on target. Time does in fact slow down—to a miserably excruciating crawl.
Minutes are now like hours, almost as if I’ve time traveled back to the eighth grade and am impatiently awaiting the seventh period bell.
There were other changes too.
Like how my body is unable to disseminate being hungry from being tired causing me to gain a couple of unwanted pounds. In this case it was ten or so. A small price to pay for adding some number of years back to to my life one would think.
Another side affect I should probably mention is how emotions are now set to high alert…DEFCON FUCKING TEN to be more precise.
I suspect this is the result of my central nervous system not keeping pace with our new sleep (or lack thereof) habits, but I have no empirical data to support this. For this reason, I’m going with Einstein again.
Time has slowed, meaning I have more time to do the things I never had time for before—namely, laughing and crying.
Prompted by little more than a traffic light suddenly changing from yellow to red, I now find myself weeping when the light turns red. Conversely, a green light is now a joyous occasion, one prompting cheers and laughter.
And while I seem to be more in touch with my ‘feelings’ these days, there have been some drawbacks to my newly found state of heightened sensual awareness.
Like how the laughter or crying may occur at inopportune moments.
BFF: “Dude, my mom passed away last night…I have to fly back home to Austin tomorrow”
Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. [laughing wildly]
BFF: [after short pause] “The fuck is wrong with you…why are you laughing?”
Me: [hand cupped over mouth, suppressing laughter] “Dude…I have no idea why I’m laughing. I’m really sorry.”
I haven’t talked to my BFF in a couple weeks. Or maybe it’s been a couple of months. I’m not sure.
I suspect it had something to do with his mom dying.
He’s probably bereaved.
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