Lesson 8

Lesson 8: Sleep is an eventual necessity for living.

I estimate that in the last six nights, I slept a total of 26 hours. Normally, I would demand at least 48 hours in six nights—but I gave up that fight last week. Throughout the previous nine months, in the best interest of my career, I always had to say, “I’ve gotta go to bed. I get up at 6:00am. No, sorry, I’ve got to work”. And now, I can say “YES! I will stay out late with you guys, I will drink on a week night, I will not go home so I can pack my lunch”. And it feels good. This is my reward for going to graduate school, working with an extremely challenging population, and agreeing to be underpaid for the rest of my career. The best part of this reward is that I experienced what it was like to get so over-tired my irises morphed into ellipses.

Luckily, after about six days of that, one must concede. I went to bed last night at 9:00 and I feel fabulous today. So fabulous, that I think I might stay out late tonight.