Seasons of Sleep

Sleep-deprived. that's how I’d describe me after last night’s tossing-and-turning episode at three in the morning till it was time to get up. This isn’t unusual; I get these kinds of nights often these days.

Once long ago, I could sleep anywhere, anytime, in any position. That was when I was still in the stress-filled workplace. Sleep was my panacea.

Between client meetings, as soon as I had stepped inside the car, my eyelids would shut off the world and I’d be in dreamland until the client’s parking lot—fresh and ready for another word-and-psyche war.

On the drive home late at night, after a long day of production meetings and ad shoots, I would immediately snooze away the one-hour trip. 

Behind my desk, after I had discussed a storyboard with a concept team, I’d cat nap before the next team entered my office door. 

No wonder I survived the corporate pressure cooker for 20 years! 

In contrast, here I am today enjoying the things I had no time for—writing, blogging, reading, teaching some, and idling some—at my own time and I could not get the same quality of sleep that used to come unbidden.

“You don’t need that much sleep anymore, Mom!” son #3 says to stop my incessant whining. 

He means, of course, you’re old.

And, of course, I am. It’s been years since I left the workplace and there have been changes, changes as many and as much as the grace that comes with them.

So why complain? Well, a friend happened to upload one of my old blogs, written a decade ago, and it is about the joy of sleep, storied sleep.

This made me wonder, what happened?

I looked up another old post,  “A Thousand Sleepless Nights,” and that shut me up—for now.  

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens . . .” Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NIV)

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