Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Get your sleep

Cody, one of the subjects of Country Boys

In thinking about the below-mentioned "so much to read, so little time" dilemma, I decided that maybe I could cut down to six hours of sleep a night, so I tried that last night. Unfortunately, instead of reading, I watched the second episode of the Frontline show "Country Boys." This show just knocks me out--it's set in eastern Kentucky, but these kids could be anywhere. They are everywhere. I think I might jettison my hero-quest plan so that I can fit this show into the last couple days of the semester and ask people to look at some of the Gatsby "American Dream" motifs as they appear in it. These kids live in one big Valley of Ashes, for sure.

The other bad thing about my new six-hours-of-sleep plan is that it makes you very tired. Normally, I only need seven hours, so you wouldn't think that one hour makes that much of a difference. Well, it does. When the tiny speakers in my 20 year old plastic clock radio switched on the morning drone of NPR this morning, I was literally still a dead man. Literally. Yes, literally. Literally. Yes. The dead of night it was for me.

I guess I'll go back to the plan where I sleep seven hours. Sometimes, I can't wait to be one of those old folks who only need like four hours of sleep a night. They must get lots done every day, those old people.

2 comments:

LetsGoThrow said...

Scott! Do not be discouraged that you are tired after your inital experiment with sleep deprivation. Soon, after six hours, you will wake feeling refreshed, plus you will have an extra 30-40 pages read per day or an extra hour of television in your log.

Mr. Hill said...

I don't know if I have it in me to go another day with this. Maybe I should be an early-to-rise guy. The problem is that it's a lot easier to stay up than it is to wake up.