Oversleeping

Morning! Or should I say afternoon. I want to expand on the reason I said I was doing this blog yesterday, which was to get my life in order. The method by which I am hoping this blog will do that is based on an article I read 2 days ago, which I believe is both very true and deeply troubling:

Goals vs Systems

The article discusses the difference between setting goals and developing and establishing systems. It argues that goals are ultimately not as useful to your long term plans as systems can be. I found myself agreeing whole heartedly and naturally began to resent the writer of the article, who had basically made me acknowledge that life cannot be a day to day chaotic roller-coaster that we ‘artists’ like it to be. There is a temptation among us (young) artsy-fartsy types to believe that any art or inspiration is mana from heaven. It strikes when you least expect it but when it does it is pure, honest, and divine. The reality could not be farther from the truth, what some of my artistic brethren fail to comprehend is that you require a great deal of preparation in order to achieve inspiration. In any case I decided once and for all to establish a system for myself, something that can help me achieve the things I want, but by first committing to a way of life.

Enter this blog. The first thing I will do, every morning, from now until I have nothing left to say, is to write and post this blog. Not because the world needs more bloggers, but because I need to start my day with a quick 1000 words every day to get the juices flowing. If I want to be a successful writer and couldn’t bang out a quick 1000 when I wake up then I would have a serious problem on my hands. I’ve actually just realized that I’ve dug myself into a rather troublesome hole. 1000 words is alot…I didn’t have to mention that at all, and could have just posted whatever number of words I wanted every day and no one would notice or care as to the length. It’s alright I’ll just remember to delete this section at the end.

Anyway back to our topic and that is systems! MY new system involves writing this blog first thing, then working on another writing project (more on that later), then going to the gym, then coming back and making lunch for my wife, then doing more work until around 9 pm, at which point I will play video games for 5 hours until 2 am. Now I know that some of you will be thinking that this blog just got way less interesting. This (self-aware) fool is going to waste 5 hours a night gaming? WHY?! It’s simple really, and another integral part of my system. I have had the goal for quite some time now, of starting a YouTube channel revolving around my gaming adventures. That goal however was not any closer to being achieved, until I realized that to make gaming videos, you have to be really, really good at the games you are playing. That means putting in alot of work into it, just like any other craft. In this day and age, being a gamer can actually be a valuable skill. The amount of money in the industry has exploded in the last few years. Professional gamers make millions, YouTube gamers make millions, the companies, billions. In any case, it seemed like a no-brainer for me to start producing high quality gaming content (don’t you just hate that word). Add to that the fact that in 2013 I spent alot of time developing gaming content for a startup (which I left after a year) and this became something of an old enemy I just needed to finally vanquish. So that is the daily system I have planned for myself. Now on to the irony.

This system was planned for a 10am wake up time. With the blog being posted at the 11/12 range. Today however, I did not wake up until around 12:30, which has the devastating effect of pushing all my other tasks too throughout the day. If I persist at the pre-determined schedule I would go to bed at 4 am! To the very observant reader, you must be wondering, why did you even wake up at 12:30? You must have gone to bed pretty late yesterday. To you I say: very well done but keep it down so the rest of the class can figure it out on their own. Yes fine I admit I went to bed at 4am yesterday, chiefly because I just don’t know where the time goes but also because systems do not account for staying up watching Gilmore Girls with your wife. I don’t have sleep apnea anymore, but you can see why it took me a while to realize that I did. I will now have to figure out a way to wake up at 10 am tomorrow, story of my life, but thankfully now it is through no fault other than my own.

Which brings us back to sleep apnea. After finally deciding that I really really had a real illness that was very REAL. I needed to go to a good nose doctor. A little history is required here. When I was 7 I broke my nose rather severely at the Gouna clubhouse (queue my upper class guilt/shame). At 12 I had corrective surgery for the deviated septum, although the surgeon said that he couldn’t fix the shape of the nose from the outside because that would require plastic surgery, which he couldn’t perform until I was 18. Now 24, I went to this very same surgeon again, who took a quick look at my nose and assured me that my septum was not the problem, and asked me to x-ray my sinuses instead. I did what the good doctor asked and went back to him. I then watched in amazement as he picked up an xray sheet, discarded the other two, and gleefully pointed at a region of my nose and said ‘There! You see how this part is too big? You need surgery!’. In that moment I was amazed not because I needed surgery, but because this (very high profile) doctor had lost all touch with humanity. He seemed a very different animal to the one I knew at 12, I remember him being kind and humble. Now a big shot, all he cared about was the next check, and that meant the next surgery. He didn’t care how the patients felt, he didn’t tell them the need for surgery in a calming or even medical way. He almost boasted about it. AT ME. THE GUY WHO NEEDS THE DAMN SURGERY. What an idiot. I knew instantly, that I had to find someone else, and fast.

 

More on that tomorrow.

Good Morning Internet

How’s it going? You all right? Glad to hear it. I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking. For those of you who do not know me, I am a 20 something Egyptian Male with a degree in Political Science from our very own American University in Cairo. Why political science you ask? At the time it was because I liked reading history and the one course I had taken in that subject offered plenty of that, so I thought why not just major in the damn thing, I’ve got nothing better to do. Fast forward 4 years and I’m still kicking myself that AUC had a FILM MAJOR  I knew nothing about. But in any case, there’s no point crying over spilt milk, although I do love me some milk so spilling it isn’t something I go around doing on the regular, that would be a tremendous waste that would surely get me a slap from the wife. Oh yeah, I’m also married. And yes, she is VERY abusive, it’s probably the reason I’ve started this blog, to try and seek help because there’s nowhere else for the pain to go. More on that later. But in all seriousness, the real reason I decided to start this daily blog is to get my god damn life on track. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a twitter-less hobo, I get shit done from time to time, it’s just the length of time between the first ‘time’ and the second ‘time’ that are an issue at the moment. Although trust me, it used to be much worse back in the old sleep apnea days.

Sleep apnea is terrible, if you have never had it, it basically feels like suffocating every night before you go to bed, sometimes for hours, before waking up having achieved little to no measurable rest whatsoever. Your brain never resets because you get negligible REM sleep and you continue a zombie-ish existence until you finally become so tired one day you sleep the biologically required 12(!) hours your body actually needs of sleep while breathing through one nostril. For over a year, maybe two (its tough to remember when things like this START), I persisted in this hellish existence, before finally thinking to myself, maybe there’s something not quite right. But I’m not one to rush into things, so I naturally took 6 months of self examination and assessment of my sleeping situation before I confirmed that there was indeed something quite wrong. The first dead giveaway is the super-breaths I found myself taking every night during my attempted sleep. Basically because my nose was incapable of filling up my lungs with a serviceable quantity of air, my mouth would have to step in, usually when I’m in Stage 1 of sleep (the one where it feels like you’re still awake), with a monstrous, alarming, yet ultimately life-saving gasp for air. This always had the helpful side-effect of pulling me right out of sleep and back to the realms of the very, very much awake. But it doesn’t stop there! If by some miracle, you actually succeed and fall asleep, the gasps just keep on coming, this time preventing you from reaching REM sleep during the night. I knew this was happening because I also had the charming side effect of finding myself falling asleep at strange times during the day (as well as being generally fatigued ALL the time). But the question was, how do I monitor this?

I had two options, one was to go to a sleep clinic. The second (and the one I chose) was to rely on a Smartphone app that supposedly measures your sleep and what stages of sleep you are in. Now I know what you are thinking, why not just go to a sleep clinic and have it properly tested, why rely on an app when you could have a definitive answer in one night. Well I’m glad you asked. The quick and simple answer is that the idea of going to a sleep clinic freaked me out to no end. I had developed over the years a distinct and measurable paranoia towards my fellow man (more on that later), and the thought of going to bed in a strange room where I would be monitored throughout the night was too creepy for my taste. Also I couldn’t escape the feeling that on that one night, my nose would for some reason decide to function properly, and I would be doomed to live a sleep apnea filled existence having been given a less than certain ‘all clear’ from Cairo Sleep Center. I realize the cynics among you must be thinking what a fool I am, rest assured I am with you on this one. I learned from a young age that my foolishness is not in my control, I was born with it, I live with it and I will die with it, so I have learnt to accept it. The App (Sleep Cycle on IOS) told me the following consistently in a 2 week period: For the first 7 hours of my sleep I would be in stages 1-4, and I would reach REM sleep at the 7th hour. This made immeasurable sense to me, because I had attempted to sleep 8 hours and overslept several times over the past year, so much so that it became something of a traumatic experience for me, waking up to find myself already late for whatever it was I was supposed to be doing, or whomever it was I was supposed to be meeting. So while the app was not a doctor, or a sleep center or an omniscient being from the 7th(!) dimension, it made sense. Alot of sense. Enough sense for me to embark on my next course of action.

More on that tomorrow!