I’d like to believe my failure to post Daily Accomplishments in the past couple days is a testament to how busy I’ve been. It’s true: I have been busy. But my failure to post speaks more to my exhaustion than to my busy-ness. After the boys went to bed, my body and brain began to crash. I abandoned my evening plans–cleaning, writing, blogging–for sleep.

It is time, I think, to schedule another neurologist appointment. My body is reverting back to its unhealthy sleep habits. I’m still sleeping with a CPAP machine to get me through the night, but I’m also taking gabapentin to keep my restless legs at bay. Further, if I do not exercise in the morning, I have to take a Nuvigil tablet to keep me awake during the afternoon. All told, it takes two medications and a machine to get me the rest I need, and I’m still exhausted at night.

Maybe my sleep issues are not as much neurological as they are environmental or emotional. My house is not very relaxing–there is too much clutter for me to feel at ease. My boys fill the house with consistent noise, and they demand my attention constantly. My professional goals include producing a book prospectus by the end of the year, so I’ve set aside an hour each morning at 5:00 to work on it, forcing me to wake earlier than I am used to. My anxiety probably doesn’t help my rest, either.

I want rest. Solid, healthy rest.

I read Daily Rituals a month ago. It’s a book covering the daily rituals of famous, creative and interesting people. It included the rituals of Buckminster Fuller, a fellow I’d like to learn more about. He believed our bodies get tired after we’ve used them beyond the point where they are efficient. If we could figure out the moment when our bodies are too exhausted for a task, we could conceivably require less rest. Let’s say you get tired after three hours of work. That means your body can handle less than three hours of work. As such, you should stop working after two-and-a-half hours, and rest for a couple hours, instead of working for three hours and needing eight hours of rest per night. Fuller trimmed his required rest time to a few hours a night for a couple years with this method.

Likewise, I’ve read that President Bill Clinton can function on four-to-five hours of sleep. I’m fortunate if I can function all day after ten hours of sleep.

Beyond the topic of sleep, though, the past couple days have been busy. I wrote a couple paragraphs for my upcoming presentation in November, and finally caught up on my weekly teaching goals. This morning I worked on campus for a couple hours, then took CKT to the North Carolina Zoo. We got home at 5:45 and had dinner. Then I took a nap for forty-five minutes.