2nd July 2007

Nothing is all that important. Lie down.

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Some person named Natalie Goldman has this to say about stress:  “Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”

Har.  This woman knows me, I’m sure.  I found her by googling “stress quotes”.

Some people’s response to stress is to eat like crazy.  Other people drink.  Many people get angry.  Some just cry a lot, or go into exercise overdrive, or go into an emotional deep-freeze.

Me?  I sleep.

In the middle of the day, my eyelids start drooping and all I want to do is find a place to curl up, close my eyes, and sleep.

It’s almost a narcoleptic style compulsion.

Y’see, when you sleep, The Real World goes away.  You don’t have to worry about how the dawg is going to handle 10 days in a car.  You don’t have to peer out the front doors at the people walking down the street who have stopped to grab a real estate flyer.  You don’t have to contemplate looking for a new abode.  You don’t find yourself sitting in the office, looking around you at the books and the heaps and the piles and the boxes, and flipping open the computer to go blog-surfing instead.

It’s an escape.  It has always been my body’s preferred mode of escape.  There is probably a well-known biological basis, something to do with constant glurts of adrenaline rushing through your body, and then having the post-adrenaline letdown.

I am well into the stress-sleep cycle by now.

There are other manifestations of stress:  I do bite my fingernails, I do have this impressive back knot that just *poof* appeared on Saturday, and I’ve been a bitch on wheels for the past few days.  But it’s the desire to sleep that’s an underlying, constant companion.

So if I’m talking to you, and start zoning out, or typing a comment that ends up sounding somewhat incoherent, it’s that sleeping thing.

Really.  I swea…rrr…it….izzzzzz….zzzzz….znork!

There are currently 3 responses to “Nothing is all that important. Lie down.”

  1. 1 On July 3rd, 2007, Julie Pippert said:

    That is a GREAT quote. Absolutely. I turn into a tired 2 year old when stressed, which does include the sleep response, but prior to that includes the increasingly whiny and impossible to please straight up to cranky response.

    Hang in there. Go with the brief rest. If I can sit and read for one chapter, then cat nap for ten, I can do so much better.

    I hope it works for you and of course, this too shall pass soon. :)

  2. 2 On July 3rd, 2007, SBird said:

    I am not a sleep person when stressed because then I dream, and my dreams are scarier than whatever I’m stressed about IRL.

    Sending you good vibes on the move.

    I love the word “glurt,” by the way.

  3. 3 On July 3rd, 2007, GrannyJ said:

    I have had periods in my life when I had to fight the sleep urge. For example, during long staff meetings at the magazine in that stuffy conference room! And one reason your dad took up smoking again after 1 year off the dirty weed was that he was nodding off while driving such places as 89A over Mingus Mountain. I couldn’t keep him awake because I, too, was nodding off!

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