Steve Gilmour, our team’s graphic designer, wrote today’s blog. He’s father to a whirlwind toddler who insists on not colouring in between the lines or finishing any of her jigsaw puzzles – one of many things that keeps him awake at night.
It was Shakespeare’s Hamlet who said: “To Sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.”
And he’s right. Chance would be a fine thing. It seems that in between answering texts, emails, ignoring the kids and binge watching Netflix with a glass of something strong, our ability to squeeze in our allotted healthy dose of sleep is becoming somewhat of a pipe dream all of its own.
Eighteen specialists for the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) did some comprehensive research and claim that adults from 26 to 64 years old need around 7 to 9 hours of sleep. I’m not a mathematician in any sense of the word, so trying to figure out where I can use so many precious hours snuggled up in a double bed and duvet is a mystery. I get so little sleep that I’d bet money my memory foam has actually forgotten me altogether.
If you take into account just how many wrench themselves from their loving mattress to go to the gym, shower, make a packed lunch, whiz up a healthy shake for breakfast, walk the dog, commute to work and are then therefrom at least 9 to 5, I’m not convinced there are that many hours left. I haven’t even allowed for the horrifying amount of time we are all supposed to spend on social media. Apparently, we spend more time online than we do actually socialising, grooming or drinking. Where does that leave my old friend bed? Perhaps the mattress has important business with the bedside tables and doesn’t need me after all.
But I can’t think about that because I’m still trying to figure out where my Simpsons and Game of Thrones marathons slot into the equation. I’m sure the 3-year-old will learn to cook her own dinner and draw her own bath, but this 7 to 9 hours sleep seems like a fabulously utopian idea.
Thinking about it, I also take slight umbrage with specialists who say that toddlers need 14 hours’ kip. Mine seems to have some personal vendetta against her little person bed and feels compelled to leap from hers at 5am in a blaze of pillows and stuffed trolls. Even if I could keep her under her cute little duvet for 14 hours a day, she has an even heavier crushing social schedule than me. At least I don’t have to make room for eating Play-Doh.
This is all just too exhausting. If I’m to get these scientifically allotted hours in, I should probably go to bed now. Although if I do work out how to make room in my life for all this extra sleep, I probably should have retired to the comfort of my good old double mattress a week ago last Wednesday…
Sleep well!