Sleep

By Quinn ā€¢ 5 minutes read ā€¢


My bed

I never thought how fixing my sleep schedule could improve my life so much. It isnā€™t an exaggeration to say Iā€™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. Canā€™t blame them for that; sometimes life just happens. I wasnā€™t particularly in a hurry to get the appointment over with. Actually, that isnā€™t entirely true. I wanted to discuss my suspicions of ADHD with them and ask them for advice on what I should do next. Iā€™ll cover ADHD in another post; letā€™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 ā€œsystem crashā€ I had at around 11pm.

You know whatā€™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. Itā€™s not that I stopped liking sweets or treating myself, but I now actually had some say in the decision process. I didnā€™t automatically buy some overpriced caffeine sugar bomb out of habit. I was actually able to pause for a second and say to myself, ā€œDo I really crave this overpriced insulin spike that badly?ā€ 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 hadnā€™t had such a fruitful stream of thought in a long time as these. I canā€™t say it was all fine and dandy, but I needed to have these conversations with myself. With that clarity, my thoughts wandered somewhere Iā€™d been avoiding: money.

Iā€™m a little ashamed to say this, but Iā€™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 purchasesā€¦ I donā€™t regret virtually any of them because they are things I either genuinely needed or wanted. Iā€™m just mad at myself I couldnā€™t wait just a little longer before I bought them. Maybe fixing my sleep wonā€™t fix my finances overnight (wink wink), but at least now I know what the root cause of the problem was, and since then Iā€™ve put a few guardrails in place.

Another interesting thing Iā€™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, Iā€™m both surprised and impressed I didnā€™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. Iā€™m not gonna pretend like sleep magically fixed my ADHD symptoms, but itā€™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 wouldnā€™t say I was feeling necessarily shit before, but I just wasnā€™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 thereā€™s one thing I learned, itā€™s that sleep isnā€™t just ā€˜rest.ā€™ Itā€™s the foundation for everything else. Get that right, and the rest starts to fall into place.

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