Let’s talk about sleep.
As a kid, I hated sleep. It meant all the adults were up doing cool adult things while I was stuck staring into the nightlight in the bathroom next to my room or playing with my stuffed animals in hopes that I would tire myself out.
I had what I recently learned is called FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out. I felt like everything fun happened at night. I felt that as long as slow, steady, quiet streams of conversation could be heard from the discomfort of my bed, I was missing out on what could’ve been — at a ripe old age of five, seven, or ten — the best moments of my life.
Being the adult that now stays up much too late on a daily basis, I can confidently look back on those nights and realize I definitely wasn’t.
I’ve now come to the conclusion that the illusion of adventure and excitement only truly exists on weekends (the realization I’ve only recently come to since I started a normal M-F, 7-4 desk job after working at Disneyland and hotel over the last few years), and even then it takes a lot of work to make that happen.
Most nights are actually spent desperately awaiting sleep. It’s the time when I get to avoid people I don’t want to communicate with in any facet, put on my favorite fuzzy socks, and curl up in my bed watching any one of my favorite shows on Netflix or YouTube. When I’m out on the town or at an event, I’m usually low-key excited for the event to be over so that I can jump into my comfiest blankets and take out my contacts with reckless abandon.
And let’s not even get me started on the thrill of napping. Those were a big no-no for me as a kid because — again — there were swings I had to almost fall off of, make-believe adventures my friends and I had to embark on, and dreams to chase. And all of that still holds true as an adult, but in the middle of all of that I find myself revitalized by the mere *idea* of getting to nap and avoid all adult responsibility for 20 minutes (just kidding, an hour… okay three hours because how important are dishes really, anyways?).
Now don’t get me wrong: I love my friends, and music, and little adventures I get to go on that make my life magic; I love the excitement of planning trips and cooking and planning for shows; and I would rather do those things with my close friends instead of sleep any day. But given the chance to be in a space with people I don’t know as an evening wears on or be in my house cooking and getting ready for the eventual date I get to go on with my pillows and blankets, I’d choose the latter any day (night?).
Now if I could just get my friends to agree to constant sleepovers or nap dates so I could have the best of both worlds, that would be supreme.
Heart Matters 