I’m mostly posting this here for my friend Elsie, but if it’s of use to other people, great!
In short, this a detailed description for a rather simple procedure, so don’t think that the length equals complexity. This is a guide to a few things you can do to help establish a good sleep schedule.
First, it’s important to understand that most changes cannot be made overnight. There are some people capable of falling asleep at any time, who don’t need help falling asleep earlier once they’ve established a sleep schedule that is far too late. This guide is not for them.
Second, it’s important to understand a few things about sleep. Sleep comes easiest to most people if you keep a strict and consistent schedule. Don’t change it on weekends, vacations, or breaks.
Sleep is a very crucial part of our lives. Although it’s easy to view it as a waste of time (why go to sleep now when I can watch this video or read this thing now and go to bed later?), it’s important to understand the ramifications sleep (or a lack thereof) can have. People who get fewer hours of sleep than they should tend to weigh more, have less energy, a weaker immune system, and are at higher risk for a slew of diseases, conditions, and earlier death. Sleep is important! Right now you need to mentally raise sleep up on your priorities list. Although right now it may seem as though the day ends before you’ve finished it, once you get better sleep, you’ll find yourself with more energy in the day to tackle the things you could not before.
Lastly, it’s important to remember that the amount of sleep that is good for one person may not be ideal for the next. This goes double if you’re a teenager or a young adult. You’ve likely heard 7-8 hours being ideal, but teenagers can need as many as 10.
If you are not sure how many hours of sleep you need, take a three day weekend to wake up “naturally” (without an alarm clock). Make note of what time you go to bed at (and approximately how long it took to fall asleep), and then what time you naturally wake up the next morning. If you slept very poorly the night before, you may end up sleeping longer than you would normally need to, which is why I recommend taking a few days to do this.
By the last day you should have a close approximation of how much sleep your body requires. Mine prefers 9 1/2 hours.
Now! Onto the directions.
What you will need
First, something you already have. “Awake lighting,” or the lights you use in your bedroom normally. A lamp, two lamps, an overhead light, it doesn’t matter. These fixtures are now your “awake lighting” and are only for your awake times.
Second, “bedtime lighting.” Depending on the size of your bedroom and the way it is organized, you will likely need two lamps (separate from your awake lighting), as well as two dim bulbs for them in a warm yellow tone (never white or blue). As wattage-to-brightness varies between different types of bulbs, it’s difficult to give you an exact wattage, but these need to be very dim. Not nightlight dim, you should be able to read right next to them. You will need to place one of these next to your bed, and one next to your computer (looking at a computer screen in a dark room can be very straining on the eyes)
Melatonin supplements personally help me, but they are not recommended for teenagers under 18.
Setting your schedule
To start off, we’re simply establishing a pattern for your body to become accustomed to, so you won’t be going to bed at 10pm (or whatever your goal is) right off the bat. So right now set a reasonable time that you think you could fall asleep at. For an example, we will use 2am. If you’ve used my previous steps to find out how many hours of sleep you need, it would be ideal to identify the time you need to wake up at (for school, work, etc.), and set it as that many hours before then. Later you can work on pushing it back farther to have a more relaxing morning.
Now, you’ll need to set a few reminders. I personally recommend setting them up with your cellphone, as computer-based reminders are too easy to ignore. You’ll need to set three reminders: one an hour before bedtime (this is computer shut-off time, or 1am), one half an hour before that (cool down time, or 12:30am), and one half an hour before that (last call, midnight).
Directions
Now for what to do when these alarms go off!
Midnight – Last Call – Not for alcohol. When this reminder goes off, it’s your cue to do any of those “I just want to read one more thing!” things you had been putting off. Check facebook, watch a youtube video, IM a few people. This is normal computer time, just a heads up to start finishing things up.
12:30am – Cool down time – At this point your activities should shift. No more shooting games, no more studying, no more active instant message conversations. It’s now officially the start of sleepy time. Switch off your “awake lighting” and turn on your “bedtime lighting,” to start signalling your brain that sleep is coming soon. Find a few relaxing things to do to ease you into a more relaxed state of mind. Loops of Zen is fun and relaxing game that I recommend for this period.
1am – Computer Shut Off Time This is exactly what it says. When this reminder goes off, finish what you are doing promptly and then shut off your computer. You don’t need to drop what you’re doing (unless you would prefer to) but at this point there is absolutely no more “one more thing!”s – you’ve had an hour to get those in. Whatever else there is can wait until morning.
At this point, do your normal pre-bed things. Change into pajamas, brush your teeth, whatever you do before bed.
If you take a melatonin supplement, now is the time to take it.
Now, when you enter your room you need to take a deep, relaxing breath and mentally shift into bedtime. Your state of mind is very important, so think relaxing things. Not about the homework you didn’t do, the test tomorrow, or whatever else may be on your mind. There is absolutely nothing that you can do about it at this point, it’s now only in your best interest to get some sleep.
Get a magazine or a book, and by your not-too-bright bedside lamp, read for a bit. If you knit or crochet, it would be fine to do that too, but only if you’re at a skill level that allows it to be second nature to you. If you have to really concentrate on what you’re doing, you’re apt to not pay attention to how sleepy you are and end up staying up too late. Every few articles (or pages, if it’s a book), take a moment to assess how sleepy you are. Shutting off the lights and laying in bed when you’re not that sleepy can actually end up causing you to fall asleep later than if you had waited until you were sleepy. Once you’re sufficiently sleepy… go to bed!
Assuming you’re allowing yourself enough time to get the proper amount of sleep, you should notice that you’re feeling better during the day, waking up will be easier, and sticking to the nighttime schedule will become easier. Give yourself at least a week to get accustomed to it before making any changes in time, and make them gradual – don’t suddenly go to bed an hour earlier. Likewise, don’t cut large chunks of time out of the schedule (unless you’ve found yourself with just too much of it), as your brain is currently relying on it to know when it should sleep.
Hopefully this will work for you
If you talk to me for a length of time, you may find that fashion is relatively important to me. Not fashion as in…
… but generally looking nice and put together. This also extends to interior design. I don’t just throw whatever in my house or on my body, and I don’t think anyone should. You should make an effort to make things look nice. Not just for other people, but for yourself. While you may not be that bothered by a random hodge podge room, I can tell you right now that you feel 100 times better walking into a nicely designed room that completely fits your tastes. Do you smile when you look around a room of yours? I do.
That being said, I think it’s also important to not get so tied up in a certain theme (fancy dress, elegant decor) that you forget that you should be focusing on what makes you smile.
I’m a Whovian (Doctor Who fan), plain and simple, and now this beauty sits proudly in my room. Do I need it? Absolutely not. Are there better things I could have spent $20 on? Without a doubt. But it lights up, makes noises, and makes me giggle like a little girl as I point it at doors and pretend to unlock them just like The Doctor.
Now you may not be a Whovian, and a sonic screwdriver toy may not bring you endless joy. But I will challenge you to take a look at your life and ask yourself if you’re taking things a bit too seriously. Loosen up and spend a little too much money on something that just makes you smile. Find your sonic screwdriver.
You can read Part 1 to my adventures at church here, which puts this post in context.
As it was with many children of the 90s, two things were large during the peak of my childhood years: Harry Potter and Pokemon. I was not exempt from these crazes, and like many, still am not.
I distinctly remember a summer afternoon shortly after the fourth Harry Potter book came out. My friend and I had both just gotten brand new copies and rather than play, we decided to read them. So there we sat on my bench seat, reading our own separate copies of the same book. We were so socially able.
Unsurprisingly (and probably like most children of that time), I wanted a Harry Potter themed birthday party. My mother and I planned all sorts of Harry Potter related crafts and activities. We bought stationary made to look like old parchment, and I remember my poor mother spending the better part of a day adjusting fonts, alignment, and text sizes to print invitations out on them. These were the days of Windows 98, you see.
Once the invitations were finally completed, they were neatly rolled up, tied with a bit of ribbon, and I passed them out to all of my friends. A completely superfluous act, mind you, as all of my friends had already been told about the party, the dates, and had already said whether they could come or not.
I took a large amount of the invitations – at least 15 – to church with me to hand out to my Sunday School classmates. Friends got them, acquaintances got them, it’s even possible that a teacher got one. Why I thought Mrs. Something would enjoy a party full of kids was beyond me, but I was 9.
Of course, while this was at the peak of the Harry Potter craze, it was also at the peak of its controversy. This was not a time when people of all different beliefs could unite over their love of a story of a boy wizard as they do now. This was during the time when many believed Harry Potter was a satanic how-to book destined to drive our impressionable children into the occult, satanism, hell, and possibly also drugs and prostitution?
With all the buzzy stories about how Harry Potter was a metaphor for the devil, some of the kids responded flat out that they couldn’t come, or at least weren’t good at hiding their displeasure over the invitation. I mean, holy crap, there’s a satanist right there in their church! Some of the kids told me quite honestly that they wanted to come, but they didn’t think their parents would let them. Others just said they had to ask their parents and never ultimately gave me an answer. You could say I was naive for being surprised, but, again, I was 9.
Party day eventually rolled around. We hadn’t gotten many RSVPS (even if they were saying “no,” but we did get some of those), which gave me hope about last-minute attendees. My close friends from the neighborhood came, of course. A girl from my church, Amanda, was the first to arrive. I didn’t know Amanda well, but I was stoked that she came.
As the party went on, it became apparent than Amanda was the only one from church who was going to show up. She seemed a bit uncomfortable since the only person she knew there was me – and she didn’t even know me that well – but it seemed like she had fun.
We filled clear plastic tubes with sparkly pipe cleaner “phoenix feathers,” glitter magic, and silver streamer “unicorn hairs”, and corked the ends with a hunk of bright blue clay and had wands; we ate a beautiful wizard hat cake made by my aunt; we tried to find a golden ping-pong ball “snitch” hidden in the yard – we had fun. My only complaint about the party is that is seems no pictures were taken. I think I remember my mom taking pictures, but I’ve not seen even one.
Strangely, Amanda never went back to church after that. It’s possible she attended one more time, but almost immediately after my party, she completely disappeared.
I don’t know what happened her. Maybe her parents failed to read the invitation properly and upon being told tales of making wands they flipped their shit and decided that church was an evil houser of 9 year old satanist prostitutes. Maybe they moved. But I’m glad Amanda came to my party. An outcome like I had would have depressed most people, but… I was 9.
Are you a child that enjoys screaming and crying in a Walmart? Or do you prefer to talk very loudly on your cell phone in a hardware store? By now, I’m sure you’ve developed a little bit of a complex. People just won’t stop complaining about you! Here you are trying to live your life the only way you know how (obnoxiously), but you can’t even watch a crappy stand up comedian without being ripped to shreds. Hmm, this must be how celebrities feel. Well, no fear, today I won’t be talking about you! Rather, I’ll be listing 6 of the most irritating people in public places that you haven’t already heard jokes about a hundred times over.
The Personal Space Invader
Did you wash your hair this morning? The Personal Space Invader knows. Creeping up on you like Christmas when you’re tight on cash, the Personal Space Invader knows nothing of common etiquette.
For most people, maintaining a distance of a few feet between themselves and strangers isn’t even a conscious decision, but merely natural. The Personal Space Invader, however, believes that standing just inches from you is perfectly acceptable. Whether this is due to impatience, poor social skills, or maybe some deeply-buried mommy issues, we may never know. All we know is that we never want to encounter one at a urinal.
The American Idol
There’s something endearing about the little old man whistling a tune as he shops. It’s nice to know that at such an old age, with so much pain in his body, he still finds happiness.
The young woman singing along to the ambient music? Not so cute.
You were doing your absolute best to tune out the 80s soft rock being piped through the speakers, but The American Idol wants to make sure that you have no choice but to acknowledge it. Singing in an inconsistent volume that’s impossible to ignore, she will make sure you hear every word of that Journey song. Because that’s exactly what your shopping trip needed.
The Bumper Cart Champion
Let’s be honest, pushing a shopping cart is a bit awkward. Leaving an aisle, your cart is out of the aisle well before you can see around the corner to know if you’ve run into anyone. As such, many cart mishaps are quickly forgiven as long as a quick, forced smile is exchanged between those involved and an inaudible “excuse me” is mumbled.
The Bumper Cart Champions, however, find such niceties ridiculous. Make no mistake, they fully intended to jump out in front of you, only to walk much slower than you. Did they run their cart into you? Tough shit.
The Bumper Cart Champions view grocery shopping as some type of game that’s part demolition derby, part lesson in intimidation. As long as they have their shopping cart between themselves and you, they are invincible. And how dare you be in their way.
The Tornado
Not many of us have very strict standards when it comes to the tidiness of a store. Afterall, we’re there to buy products, not to live. However, we would prefer that the can of soup we’re looking for be more or less in the right place; not on the floor, three aisles over, or three shelves down.
Sightings of The Tornado are rare, and as such they’re believed to be very quick creatures. However, The Tornado leaves a wake of mess and destruction behind them. Paper towels all over the bathroom floors, products pushed around like there had been gold hidden behind them, clothing and produce carelessly left on the floor… The employees in charge of dealing with such messes have no hope of ever catching up.
The Sleepshopper
A trip to CVS is far from a black tie affair, but we do our best to make ourselves look at least presentable. We scrape the crust from the corner of our eyes, drag a brush through our tangled hair, and throw on a pair of jeans under the Tshirt we’ve had since highschool. Okay, we’re not winning any beauty pageants, but we made some effort. The same cannot be said of The Sleepshopper. Wandering through the store in their pajama pants and a camisole with a not-so-functional built-in bra, the Sleepshopper has no concerns over things like image or vanity. Where you made the effort of tying your shoe laces, The Sleepshopper merely stuck their stinky feet into their old slippers before getting into the car.
Are we jealous of their comfort? Okay, a little. But that doesn’t mean we’d go out in public looking like trailer trash with insomnia.
The Stinkbomb
You don’t have to be a Personal Space Invader to know the effects of The Stinkbomb.
The Stinkbomb decided that showering more than once every two weeks was an unnecessary waste of water, and of course, you’ve encountered them the day before their biweekly shower. Smelling strongly of dead skin, festering hair grease, and last week’s ball sweat, The Stinkbomb serves no purpose in life other than to make the dinner you were shopping for seem completely unappealing. We might say something to them about this, but we can’t get close enough to without gagging.
You can read part 1 of my church adventures here.
After I had been attending Mr. and Mrs. Moore’s class for a few weeks, they did an exercise to help us all get to know one another. Papers were passed around asking us simple things like our favorite foods and how many pets we had. We filled them out, and then sat in a circle and Mrs. Moore would ask some of us to tell her one of the things we wrote down.
“Michela, what’s your favorite TV show?” She asked.
“Veggie Tales!”
“Super! David, what’s your favorite show?”
“Veggie Tales.” And so this went on throughout the circle, every kid answering Veggie Tales.
“Christy, what’s your favorite show?” She eventually asked me.
“Gargoyles!” This answer was met with some confusion, understandably. As I said before, I come from a home of godless heathens and such.
“Jeffrey, what’s your favorite color?” Mrs. Moore asked.
“I LIKE YELLOW!” A kid further down the circle shrieked.
“Super! But right now I’m asking Jeffrey, so if you could just hold onto that answer for a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay,” the kid answered meekly.
“Jeffrey, what’s your favorite color?”
“Red.”
“Super! Allison, what is your favorite c-”
“I-I-I LIKE YELLOW!” The kid yelled out again.
“That’s super, Chris! But right now I’m asking Allison. Just be patient, okay?” Mrs. Moore said patiently. Chris nodded. “Allison, what is your favorite color?”
“Pink!”
“Super! Okay, David, what is your favorite color?”
“Green!”
“I LIKE YELLOW!!”
This continued as Mrs. Moore slowly made her way around the circle. Sometimes Chris wouldn’t yell out, but he mostly did. Finally, Chris was next. He squirmed nervously.
“Chris, what is your favorite color?” Mrs. Moore asked – as if we didn’t know.
“I… I like yellow…” He mumbled shyly.
When I was about 7, my grandparents moved from “the country” to a condo in the city I was presently living in. At this point in my life, I had only vague memories of my Mema and Poppy – mostly what I’d been told that I remembered.
My Mema and Poppy were and are quite religious. Not “put on a dress, you pants-wearing heathen!” religious, but pretty much as religious as you would expect your 70 year old grandparents to be. Seeing as I had been raised by godless heathens in a house where we didn’t pray before dinner, they decided it’d be a good idea to get me to try the whole church thing out, and so they asked me if I’d like to go to church with them.
I can tell you that at this point in time I believed in a god and Heaven, but beyond that it was very murky. I didn’t know who Jesus was, and the only time I prayed was when there was something I wanted to say to one of my deceased pets.
Seeing as I was 7, there was no patiently waiting to see what exactly Sunday School was. Instead, I grilled my mother endlessly for the better part of a week about what exactly would be happening there. The questions I asked were utterly ridiculous things that she couldn’t have known, like whether we would have a chalkboard or what kind of chairs we’d be sitting in. I was a strange child.
The Sunday finally rolled around, and I donned the brand new dress that I had gotten just for the occasion, then bounced out the door to meet my grandparents at their car.
Once we got there, my grandmother spoke with an old lady at the front desk, who told me where I needed to go to get to my class. After being led down a few flights of stairs and walked through a gym, I arrived at my new class.
The room was a bit small to be holding over a dozen second graders and the large table we sat around, but seeing as we were second graders, I don’t think we particularly cared.
Our teachers were a young married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Moore. Mrs. Moore served more as the primary teacher, whereas her husband was more of an aide and provided comic relief. I don’t remember too terribly much about them, but I can tell you that Mrs. Moore always wore floor-length skirts, and rather than saying “cool” like I was used to, her answer to everything was “super!”
Having arrived a little late that morning, they were already in the middle of story time. As if they knew in advance that new blood was coming, they were telling the penultimate story of Jesus’ death. Not quite the story time I was used to, you can imagine.
“They shoved a crown of thorns on his head and nailed his hands and feet to a big wooden cross,” Mrs. Moore recited solemnly.
“God…” I mumbled in disbelief.
Fuck spiders. I hate them.
Spring is especially terrible for people who hate spiders, because this is when spiders come out of their spider-hibernation (I have no clue what they do in winter) and think to themselves “there is nothing that I would enjoy more than ruining your life with my presence!” So they spider their way into some tiny hole in your house that you didn’t know existed, wait until you’re completely incapable of properly dealing with a spider incursion, and then make themselves known to you.
What they do after making themselves known varies. I’ve included a list of the most common spider types, illustrated with non-offensive doodles. Or at least, as non-offensive as anything regarding spiders could ever be. Though, they’re kind of adorable.
Average Spider
The Average Spider is average. It is not particularly large, small, fast, slow, nor does it posses any supernatural spider-talents.
Severity with which it must be killed: Average severity
Tiny Spider
The Tiny Spider can be difficult to spot. Tiny Spiders typically mean you no harm, and wish only to build their tiny webs and catch tiny bugs. However, Tiny Spiders are incredibly unaware of their surroundings and the fact that everything is fucking huge compared to them
. This leads them to go on inadvertent suicide missions, such as descending in front of your face or crawling on your arm.
Severity with which they must be killed: Killing is not necessary unless the spider approaches. Then the killing should be done with a patronizing air, as if the spider should have known better.
Fast Spider
Upon first glance, a Fast Spider can be confused for an Average Spider. A Fast Spider will often sit in one place for a period of time, before taking off at a speed that should not be physically possible for a spider to attain. You will watch in vain as the spider climbs out of your reach and sight.
Severity with which it must be killed: STOMP THE FUCKER! That’ll teach it to run from such a big, powerful being. Fuck you, spider.
Hiding Spider
The Hiding Spider is a subspecies existing in every species of spider known to man. Any spider can (and given the chance, will) turn into a Hiding Spider. However, there exists a “pure bred” Hiding Spider that is not an off-shoot of any other spider species. These pure bred Hiding Spiders can only be seen for seconds at a time before they make their way out of sight, and presumably into a portal leading to another dimension, as you will never ever fucking find them again.
Severity with which they must be killed: If you can find it, intense severity. Don’t fucking hide from me, spider. Fuck you.
Aggressive Spider
This spider thinks it can take you on.
Completely unaware of its size in comparison to you, this spider believes it can take you down. Being of such a belief, this spider will do stupid things such as bite you, chase you, or raise its tiny spider fisticuffs to challenge you to a duel.
The only comfort in knowing such spiders exist is to imagine that one of them will suddenly realize the gravity of such a situation and piss itself in fear.
Do spiders piss?
Severity with which it must be killed: All the Raid in the house. Set it on fire for good measure. Don’t fuck with me, spider. I’m bigger than you.
…Spider?
Like the missing link of the spider kingdom, this abomination of nature will just waltz right into your bathroom, made cocky by its “unique” appearance.
Is it a spider? Or is it some kind of strange beetle? No, wait, I think it’s an ant. No, there’s… does this motherfucker have seven legs?
Severity with which it must be killed: Oh god, what is it, just kill it. Kill it kill it kill it.
Giant Spider
The Michael Moores of the spider world, these fatties can at first intimidate with their size. However, upon further observation it becomes clear that they’re not really capable of doing much. Except eating, they’re really good at that. So as long as they don’t decide to eat you, you’re probably good.
Severity with which they must be killed: Mild. Unless they’re trying to eat you. Then you should probably kill them.
Shenanigans and Malarky 