A good night"s sleep

Yesterday, as I was walking Mabel along a stretch of the Cross County Connector trail near my house, meditating on how I can apply the audio inputs from How to create a mind: The secret of human thought revealed, by Ray Kurzweil,

mom called and the conversation turned to my health. Jim Rohn, In the art of exceptional living, stated the moral obligation to positively address heath factors, "I'll take care of me for you," which helps keep me mindful of how I am or am not taking care of my body.

I learned long ago, from painful experience, the relationship between sleep deprivation and poor performance in a classroom, as well as a correlation between elevated blood pressure and diabetes. My full-throttle approach of teaching through lunch and working with students 2-3 days a week after school, can take a serious toll on my body. That approach also leads to snarky criticism from colleagues and administrators. When I run my machine so hard that I begin falling asleep five feet from the front floor, with Mabel licking my face, or falling asleep on the couch curled up next to Mabel, and don't discipline myself to go to bed and put on my darth vader machine, my cognitive capacity begins to flatline. All Saturday, I was a walking zombie. None of the items on my list got done. Mom reminded me to use the bipap, so last night I took half an ambien, put on the mask, and got a solid 8 hours of sleep, and now I feel terrific.

There's a time to sleep and a time to roll. Let's roll!