Ever have one of those moments when you find yourself wondering “Why am I whining about _[fill in the blank_“?
Coming nigh to the close of another full day of batting from pillar to post — doggy walk, grocery run, Home Depot run, Lowe’s run, Best Buy run, electric supply store run, bird feed project, mess pick-up, correspondence catch-up, real estate surveillance check, feast cooking, raccoon tracking, and on and on and endlessly on — I find myself wondering…why the hell do I worry about the chronic insomnia that rousts me around 2 or 3 every morning, when in fact during the day I DON’T FEEL TIRED?
In fact, I feel quite peppy all day: no sense of insomniac fatigue or crankiness.
Maybe — could it be? — just maybe going to bed around 9 or 10 p.m., waking up at 2 or 3 (= 5 hours’ sleep), loafing in the dark until 4 or 5 a.m., then falling back to sleep and waking up around 6 or 7 a.m. (= 5 + 2 hours sleep, for a total of 7 hours) is perfectly reasonable? The upshot is around seven hours’ of sleep, despite a two- or three-hour hiatus. Seven hours is thought to be normal and healthy for the agèd human. What is the difference whether you sleep 7 hours straight from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., or 7 hours off and on between around 9 p.m. and around 7 a.m.?
Seems to me if you feel fine the next day, all day, there really is no difference.
How many other things do we whine about when…really…they make no difference?
- The homicidal traffic and our fellow moronic drivers? If we get from point A to point B without killing each other, does it really make any difference?
- Our crazy relatives whose political opinion pigheadedly differs from our enlightened wisdom: this makes a difference how?
- The gas price at the QT was 22 cents higher than at the Costco, where we had to drive an extra 7 miles (14 miles round-trip) to avail ourselves of the bargain: this changed our lives how?
- The city raises its monthly trash collection bill by $2.46: our lives are destroyed by this to what extent?
Huh. Think o’ that.
What’s your favorite whinge?
I wouldn’t call it my fave, exactly, but one of my common whinges is how little customers are tipping now that there is no tip line on receipts that total less than $50. I can, and often do, go on and on about this. I know I shouldn’t because it doesn’t do any flipping good to complain, especially since management doesn’t give a rip.
Yeah…that sounds suspiciously like time to take action (i.e., start looking for another job) rather than time to fret about it. Pretty annoying, one must admit!
I normally sleep through the night, but every now and then I wake between 2 and 4am and be unable to get back to sleep. I usually stay in bed, but if trying to fall asleep doesn’t avail, I’ll either listen to an audiobook or work through scenes in a story I’m writing. Frequently I get tired just as it’s time to get up and feed the cats, unfortunately.
MrH read something online that suggested humans may be wired to sleep in intervals, rather than one uninterrupted shot.
If it works for you, why fight it? 🙂
Trying to think of a whinge to add in solidarity… How about how the kitchen can stand empty for hours, but the minute I go out there to do something, that’s when everyone in the house wants to get a drink/rinse a plate/make a sandwich/get underfoot? I think there’s a signal hidden in the floor somewhere.
Or how MrH tends to call when I’m elbows-deep in dishwater? It’s like he knows!
LOL! Men, like children, are equipped with a finely tuned radar system. They KNOW…
I think you are on to something!
I’ve been attempting to cut waaaay down on my whining and it has truly helped me. At the very least, I don’t annoy people I don’t know with my petty complaints. UNLESS of course, they start it. Then the whine-fest is on! Ha!
{chortle} That would be “Controlled Whining.” 😀