» Seann’s World: Clocking in
Seann Walsh takes steps to correct the damage love of sleep has done to his body clock
I haven’t slept for two nights, entirely by choice. This doesn’t suit me – I savour sleep and all its associates: naps; snoozes; lie-ins; and the rest. Even the coma has an eerie appeal, as a long-term alternative to the droning tedium of consciousness and all its bounden obligations of responding to emails, buying milk, washing up – all the things that plug life’s many holes.
Most people feel the same: observe our unanimous hatred of the alarm clock. Sleep is the bliss of ignorance, a lonely paradise where you don’t know that you’ve got to go to work, or that you’ve got a doctor’s appointment, or that you’re snoring incredibly loudly. But, alas, the world awaits. Your nasty, malicious little fascist of an alarm begins to bleep, or buzz, or ring, or talk, or shrill, or whatever dreadful noise it makes. It punctures your rest.
“I savour sleep: naps; snoozes; lie-ins. Even the coma has an eerie appeal”
Fleetingly, the real world mingles with our dreams: external noises take part and become plot lines. But the alarm clock is louder and more persistent than the dream. Before long, you’re awake. The duties of the day don’t occur to you – they land on you. Most of us are in a bad mood for at least an hour after this. Waking up, at first, is like being kidnapped. It grows easier to cope with as the day marches on. But observe that initial reaction to the morning, to the day, to the world: sleep must be good.
The only people who don’t enjoy sleep must be those with conditions. I know a sleepwalker who recently, in his sleep, got out of bed, walked downstairs, washed up and then went back to bed. That’s more than I do when I’m awake. Sleep is quite possibly the best part of life.
It is with disappointment, therefore, that I regard my current state. It’s 5am. This is now my second consecutive night without sleep. I last woke up 40 hours ago and counting. This bout of deprivation is an attempt to correct my aberrant body clock, on which I seem to have disabled the alarm. Essentially, I’ve become bored of waking up at two in the afternoon. So, I thought, if I deprive myself of sleep for one night, I’ll reset my body clock.
But I left it too late. It reached midnight. If I’d gone to sleep then, I’d have gone full circle to waking up at two again, via the the mildly hallucinogenic torture of the all-nighter. So, having had enough coffee and cigarettes to addict a village, I’m here again, at the dangerous part, when the gravity of sleep could pull me down any time.
It is the best method of fixing the body clock. I know someone who has a different way. He’s the hapless type. When his television broke, he (somehow) discovered that it worked upside down, after which he chose to perfect sitting on his head, rather than simply missing Countdown while the rest of his friends worked. That’s his version of resourcefulness.
When his body clock goes out of tune (very frequently),
he cures it by going to sleep each day an hour earlier than the previous day, until eventually, after two-or-so weeks, he’s ‘cured’, and able to sleep at night. But it doesn’t really work out for him. Each time, he inadvertently causes the problem again using the same system as the solution.
I hate to suggest it to anyone, but perhaps he should invest in an alarm clock.
