It's the third week of classes, and somehow I am already in this ridiculous routine of sleeping only about four to six hours a night (I can actually feel my mom's disapproval as she reads this). [Update: my mom insists it is not "disapproval" she has but "concern" instead. Fair enough.] I simply have too many things I want to accomplish in my days. Already, I seem to be leaving my health in the dust, as I reluctantly but sleepily cut my yoga time in half each day.
There's this weird, unspoken rule in college - and society - that sleeping means you're being lazy, or not working hard enough. It's an odd energy that can really pull you in, forcing you to lose yourself as you succumb to the zombie inside you. Last spring semester, I became that zombie, sleeping at random hour intervals throughout the day and never at night, constantly pushing myself to go, go, go. It of course backfired (as ignoring our health usually does), and I became physically, mentally, and emotionally unstable. After I came back to school this past fall, I vowed to sleep at least six hours a night every single night because without that sleep, I significantly decrease my ability to function like a normal human being.
And here I am again, breaking my own "rules." It's easy to throw the idea of six hours of sleep out the window when you have to stay up that extra hour every once in a while, but somehow that has been happening daily. This morning, I woke up extra early to get work done that I hadn't completed before bed, but ended up taking multiple 10 minute long power naps in a row after only about an hour and a half of work. This time, I finally listened to my body and let it get that extra hour of sleep it was demanding from me. I'll admit that I am a little disappointed in myself for not getting my goal work done, but practiced self compassion by comforting and reassuring myself, as my own friend, that I had done the best I could do yesterday; I had diligently worked on homework all day, and maybe the goals I had set were just unrealistic. Now, after my extra little hour of sleep, my body is much more willing to follow my mind around all day as I work on that to-do list.