Sleep Schedule

I'm a night person. My normal sleeping schedule is 1:30-9:30, later on weekends. So basically, an average student. This is not something I'm overly fond of. Yeah, it might be natural for me, but so having no hand-eye coordination. If I can learn to juggle, I can change my sleep schedule.

I'm generally a lot happier with a 11-7 schedule. This isn't just a "life would be better if I was a lark" wishful thinking. There have been several month spans where I'd force myself wake up at 7 every weekday. The rush I get from being up early is incredible. There was even a month where I did 6, out every day before the sun was up. It felt like stepping out into a barren world and watching it come alive. I'm just a lot happier on days when I wake up early. On the flip side, if I get up past 10 I just feel miserable. It's like the whole day is wasted.

There are a couple of big disadvantages to an early schedule. One, I'm shifting two of my awake hours to when nobody is up, or at least socializing. I'm taking a small hit to my social life. Then again, I'm usually in the apt at that time so I'm only affecting my fb and roommate interactions. I'm not particularly worried about either of those. The other issue is that I'll have to get better at completing assignments. When you stay up late, you can trade sleep for homework time. But if you go to bed early, you have no idea when to wake up to have adequate working time and can botch an assignment that way. This means I'll have to get better at doing assignments in advance and managing my time well. Horror of horrors.
 
The bonuses are huge and the problems easily resolvable. So why don't I do this all the time? Like I said, my body naturally does a late-night schedule. It's also a lot easier to go to bed late- it's only a matter of procrastinating sleeping. Sleeping early requires a lot more dedication and willpower. I've only recently tried to pick it back, and have consistently woken up at 7 for the past week. I stopped it during the weekends because everything interesting happens in the evening and night.

I'm going to try to keep this up at least until Spring break. I've never kept up an early bird schedule during vacation. I think that would be nice to try. It's just a lot harder when you don't have obligations during the day. Even if I stumble over vacation I'll attempt to pick it back up again for the new quarter and run with it until finals. It seems like it'd be really nice to do during the Spring. I'd get an extra two hours of warm daylight.

"I can't do this."

Most of you know that I'm a really avid juggler. I also really love teaching juggling. If you want to learn how to juggle, I will find time to teach you. Of course a lot of people don't want to learn. A lot of them say "I'm just not interested," which is fine. And a lot say that they would be interested, but "they don't have the hand-eye coordination".

This is stupid.

Imagine if you came to me saying "H, you should read more", and I said "Sorry, I don't have the vocabulary for that." You'd laugh at me. You'd tell me vocabulary isn't something you have or you don't. It's something that nobody starts out with and everybody develops over time. If you don't have the vocabulary to read a book, than build it up. How? Read more. Reading and vocabulary feed into each other, where developing one also helps you develop the other.

Why should hand-eye coordination be any different?


A lot of people I've met have this weird static view of their abilities. They think you have a fixed coordination, or balance, or stamina or whatever that can't change no matter what you do. Because they can't always catch a ball, they will never be able to juggle. Since I can juggle, I obviously must have burst out of my mother's womb doing a five-ball cascade.

Fun fact: nobody is able to naturally juggle. I've met exactly one person who instantly picked it up, and she already did a crapton of coordination-heavy activities beforehand. Juggling is just an unnatural movement that your body doesn't know how to do, and it can only get that by seriously improving your coordination. Don't believe me? My coordination was so bad it took me three days to learn. Most people take three hours.

As I got better at juggling, my coordination and reflexes steadily improved.  As they improved, I became a better juggler. This is because my attributes are dynamic. It's not that I have bad reflexes, it's that I have bad reflexes for now.

And why shouldn't this be true of everything? Don't think you have the balance to dance? Then dance until you have balance. Don't have the ear for music? Then practice until you can tell the tones. Don't have the patience to meditate? Keep doing it for a month and see what happens.

We all start with varying strengths and weaknesses. But when it comes to improving, dedication and motivation matter much more than natural ability. Learning and doing new things change us. If you think of yourself as static then you're doing yourself a huge disservice .

Chain of Insights

I vaguely know I had something I was going to talk about this week. Probably something either navel-gazing or incredibly pretentious. But I can't remember it. And I don't care! Because I actually have something I DO want to talk about!

Last night I was getting ready for bed when I was struck with a mode of insight. It's hard to describe. For maybe five minutes my brain stopped thinking in terms of logical progresses and just went straight from premises to conclusions. I managed to write one of them down, but the rest faded away after half an hour. It was one of the most surreal experiences since Chile.

So now what? I really want to make it happen again. How do I do that? I don't know. I'm completely at loss for how to go about this. Anybody have any ideas?