Orion's Void

Sleep

I never thought how fixing my sleep schedule could improve my life so much. It isn't an exaggeration to say I'm a different person now. It all began sometime at the end of the last month. I was anticipating my regular check-up by my GP, which has been postponed like 4 times because either they had a vacation or fell ill. Can't blame them for that; sometimes life just happens. I wasn't particularly in a hurry to get the appointment over with. Actually, that isn't entirely true. I wanted to discuss my suspicions of ADHD with them and ask them for advice on what I should do next. I’ll cover ADHD in another post; let’s stay on sleep for now.

It was a Saturday night when I thought to myself. What if I tried just sleeping normally? What if I tried fixing my sleep before I bring up ADHD with my GP? Man, the first 3 nights were ROUGH. Those nights were painfully boring. I essentially spent about an hour staring into the ceiling and wishing my melatonin would start releasing already. Regardless, I pushed through (somehow), and by around the 5th night I started to feel naturally tired around 9pm. Which was a pleasant surprise instead of my usual "system crash" I had at around 11pm.

You know what's interesting? That just after a few nights of a proper 8 hours of sleep, I felt like my brain got supercharged a little. Aside from mental clarity, I noticed something peculiar during my weekend grocery shopping. I did not feel the temptation to buy a shit ton of sweets as usual. I resisted the forbidden calling of the Coke machine on the way out. It's not that I stopped liking sweets or treating myself, but I now actually had some say in the decision process. I didn't automatically buy some overpriced caffeine sugar bomb out of habit. I was actually able to pause for a second and say to myself, "Do I really crave this overpriced insulin spike that badly?" The answer was no. The answer was usually a no, but when your brain is running on fumes, the prefrontal cortex responsible for decision-making is powerless, sitting in the backseat. Aside from the small win of resisting the sweets at the mall, I did a LOT of thinking that weekend. I hadn't had such a fruitful stream of thought in a long time as these. I can't say it was all fine and dandy, but I needed to have these conversations with myself. With that clarity, my thoughts wandered somewhere I’d been avoiding: money.

I'm a little ashamed to say this, but I'm going to have to stay in my current job longer than I wanted to. Not by a ridiculous amount, but definitely a few more months than I hoped for.

Man, I did so many impulse purchases... I don't regret virtually any of them because they are things I either genuinely needed or wanted. I'm just mad at myself I couldn't wait just a little longer before I bought them. Maybe fixing my sleep won't fix my finances overnight (wink wink), but at least now I know what the root cause of the problem was, and since then I've put a few guardrails in place.

Another interesting thing I've noticed is that days are longer. Seriously, my sleep-deprived self could easily drift through the week without even noticing it was Friday again. Considering the circumstances, I'm both surprised and impressed I didn't royally fuck anything up. Not to say I have a huge responsibility at my job, but I still handle invoices and buy goods on behalf of the company. Anyway, back to time. It feels as if time itself stretched at least 3 times. As with everything, this change came with a few upsides and downsides. Major upside? Weekends are now a lot longer, and I can actually get shit done. Major downside? So are the weekdays now, but one other upside counters this pretty effectively. That being focus. I'm not gonna pretend like sleep magically fixed my ADHD symptoms, but it's easier to focus now. Not only that, but also remain focused for just a bit longer when needed. This means that I can much, much more easily get into flow mode, and the time starts sprinting away again.

Last but not least, I feel happier now and less irritable. I wouldn't say I was feeling necessarily shit before, but I just wasn't myself. I could feel happiness, but not contentment. Easy dopamine in the form of Instagram or music with a greatly high BPM to get through the day. I relied heavily on either dopamine or cortisol to do virtually anything during the day.

If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that sleep isn’t just ‘rest.’ It’s the foundation for everything else. Get that right, and the rest starts to fall into place.

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