Sleeping It Off

It's amazing what a lot of sleep can do.

My normal state of being is sleep-deprived, since I average about 6 hours a night, which is not enough. But since my road trip to Albuquerque, followed the next weekend with a workshop in DC, I've been under severe sleep deprivation. Wednesday and Thursday last week, I started dozing off while I drove to work, and it's only by the grace of God that I didn't hit anything.

Thursday night and much of Friday, I did more local tour director work at a big corporate event in the area. It wasn't very demanding, but it kept me on my feet in the sun all day, and by Friday afternoon, I was beat. At 4:30pm I fell asleep sitting at my computer desk at home. I went to bed at 5:30 and slept 14 hours.

For the first weekend in I-don't-know-how-long, I didn't take a nap. I was alert. I got things done. I bought a few of the less-expensive things I'll need for making money with photography. I went to the photography store and talked to the guys about professional-level digital cameras, only to be slammed by major sticker shock. I took my sub-professional-level digital camera to the beach and started taking pictures. I went to the movies with my daughter ("Just Like Heaven." Loved it.) And I wrote a first draft of a travel article for an online magazine that looks interested. All that because I got caught up on my sleep.

So the hard part now will be leaving work at a decent hour so I can get to bed at a decent hour. It's hard to balance the need to get work done with the need to get sleep. Somehow, work usually wins. That's gotta change.