Dream Weaver

     I've talked a little bit in the past (mostly in passing) about my sleeping habits. But last week, it occurred to me that I should probably write about it. It's something that people don't hear about a lot unless you ask about it. And on the hierarchy of personal problems, it's usually not anywhere near the top. But after last week, it's worth writing about.
     After about a week, I'm back to my normal sleeping habits and it’s not good. I realized something last week. The weekend in I spent Iowa was some of the best sleep I've had over the past seven months. However, now I'm back to sleeping 7, 8, or 9 hours and still feeling tired when I wake up.   
     On Friday after lunch, two people from the Liberty team stopped by my apartment for a visit. They had some time to kill after a class at their university nearby. About half way through, I felt like I could go to sleep for another few hours. For the week-days that I was here last week, every one I woke up tired and never really "woke up" until after lunch. Every day seemed to blend into the next. I’d have to think very hard about what happened on what day last week. If it weren’t for my schedule, I’d probably have forgotten where I needed to be.
     Some of that can obviously be chalked up to jet lag. I spent over thirty hours, by my body clock, traveling half-way across the world. I think I caught about three complete hours of sleep over the course of that time. Factor in the stress of missed flights, frantic on-foot navigation, and missed luggage and I'm surprised I even went to the Movie Night on Tuesday. I really shouldn't have. Sleep would have been a better idea.
     The good news is that Friday night (Friday into Saturday) was the best sleep I had last week. I went to bed around 12:45AM and woke up around 6AM feeling awake and refreshed. But since it was still 6AM, I went back to sleep and didn't get out of bed until 9:30. That time on Friday, I was still fighting to stay awake. While I haven't had the same quality of sleep the past few nights, it has been getting better.
     I attribute some of that good sleep to getting a few things off of my chest by talking to several people whose opinions I truly value. Or maybe my body was tired enough that it crammed all the needed sleep into one short five-hour period. Incredulous too? Yeah, that last sentence was more filler to make this paragraph roughly as long as the preceding ones.
     So what's the culprit? I believe it comes down to two main things actually. First, I believe it's partly due to my (not-so) new, city lifestyle. By nature of the city life, people tend to wake up later and stay up later. I'll regularly get message alerts from VK (the main social network here) from the various chats I'm involved in well after midnight. Here in Kiev, there are no crops to tend and no cows to milk. Of course, there are going to be certain jobs that require getting up early. Police, marshrutka drivers, sidewalk vendors. But there aren't the same requirements in the city for waking up early as in more agrarian areas .
     Secondly, it's my activity level. This time last year, I was working a regular, physically-involved job. I'd wake up at around 6:30 AM, get to work by 8AM, work until 4:30PM and then be in bed before 11PM. I'd be on my feet for most of the day. Stepping up into airplanes, walking all over the airport, crouching, carrying, moving, etc. About the only days where I have a similar activity level are when I have a physically demanding job like when I built the labyrinth or when I go sightseeing.
     It took me a while to settle on a title for this post. It was either "Dream On" or "Dream Weaver." The second is definitely more accurate. Whoever is tasked with writing the scripts for my dreams has a seriously weird imagination. I really don't want a psychologist to see what I've been dreaming about. They might start asking me about scary things from childhood and "How does that make you feel" kind of things.
     For now, my main course of action is to start going to bed earlier. Before midnight would be a good start. Seeing as I normally get up anywhere between 8 and 9:30AM, then just that amount of sleep will be a big improvement. We will see how it goes.
     So, now we come to the day-to-day stuff of this week's post. David and his family are on vacation this week. It's Spring Break and I'm left in charge. That's definitely not the same as saying the inmates are in charge. I saw a good t-shirt last week. "I didn't escape, they gave me a day pass."
     I said last week that I'll be leading the English clubs for Sunday, Monday and the next Sunday. Sunday this week went well. We had a shorter meeting because of Liberty worship. Jon helped out by taking care of the beginner group. We only got to meet for about an hour. But for a group of about twenty, it went well. I really wish we had more time. It would have been good to take more time discussing the story of Telemachus. We had some interesting discussion from it. Tonight, in about five minutes, I'll be leaving for Monday English. We get the full time tonight but the normal number of teachers. David was nice enough to prepare three lessons ahead of time. All I have to do is present the opening and closing announcements as well as teach my group. David makes it look easy. I'm just getting more practice these three days so I can present like him.
     Alright, time to go. I'll talk to you soon.