Well, ladies
Well, ladies, I have a confession and it is not interesting but it is true. I have not slept well in about six weeks and I know exactly why and I have been pretending I do not.
It is the laptop at 11pm.
Not work. I stopped working by eight most nights. But I open the laptop after dinner and I read things, watch things, scroll things, and I tell myself this is winding down. I have a whole internal argument prepared about how this is my time and I deserve to spend it however I want and anyone who tells me to put the screen away is underestimating how small my world gets after nine o'clock.
That argument is beautifully constructed and completely wrong.
The light from the screen suppresses melatonin. I know this. Everyone knows this. It is not new information. But knowing it and doing something about it are separated by a canyon I have been decorating instead of crossing. ☕
Dani started her post-dinner walks last week and asked me to come twice. I said yes both times and when I got home it was 9:40 and instead of opening the laptop I just sat on the couch and read an actual paper book. Not because I am disciplined. Because I was still wearing my coat and the laptop was upstairs and the distance between me and the screen was just large enough that I chose the closer thing.
I slept seven hours. Unbroken. First time in weeks.
The next night I opened the laptop at 10:15 and I was awake until 12:30 staring at the ceiling. So the experiment ran itself.
I told Clare about this and she said "so stop." Two words. As if the thing I have spent six weeks negotiating with myself about is a light switch. I love Clare but sometimes her clarity makes me want to scream into a cushion. She is not wrong. She is just fast in a way that makes me feel slow. 😌
Here is what I am actually doing now, not what I should do, what I am doing.
Thirty minutes before I want to be asleep, the laptop closes. The phone goes on the charger across the room. I pick up whatever is nearest, a book, a magazine, the back of a cereal box, I do not care.
I do not enjoy it. I want to be clear about that. The first fifteen minutes feel like sitting in a waiting room for an appointment I scheduled with myself. But somewhere around minute twenty my eyes start doing a thing where they are not tracking anymore, they are just resting on the page, and that is when sleep is close.
I have done this five nights out of the last seven. The two I skipped I paid for. ✨
Thirty minutes. Screens off. You will not like it and it works anyway.
