I'm making a new "Mid-Year Resolution". No, sadly, it's not to cut down on my overuse of scare-quotes. Rather, I'm going to try real hard to get to bed by 11:15 every single night, and to blog regularly between 11:00 and 11:15. This is going to be quite difficult for me—here I am on the first day posting at 12:45AM. (I had a couple of hours of nap earlier, but still—not a very good excuse.) I think it's a necessary lifestyle change, though, for several reasons…
First, I gave up caffeine altogether and forever a few weeks ago; too many PVCs and other heart arrythmias. There's a couple of other medical reasons why I shouldn't have caffeine, but this one might kill me. (The only exception to my abstinence is in those driving emergencies where I"m more likely to die of falling asleep on the road than of using stimulants. Even then, I'm tending toward the gentler nicotine, in cigar form. Don't use drugs, kids.) If I can't cheat, I'd better get to a regular and sufficient sleep schedule to be awake.
In addition, there's some medical evidence now that obesity is partly a function of insufficient sleep. I doubt getting enough will solve my weight problem, but it might at least be a bit of help. Similarly, I have always had mild, weight-dependent sleep apnea. The #1 piece of advice given by my sleep therapist when I was diagnosed, which I've never followed, was to establish not just sufficient sleep, but a regular sleep schedule.
I'd like to be clear-headed. I play a lot of 9x9 Go using gnugo/cgoban; it's really obvious in my play how much sleep I've had. I have a lot of important things to do and think about right now. I need to be at the top of my form.
My boy is sleeping roughly 9:30-7:00 now. It would be nice to see him for more than seconds in the morning. 11:00 is still late enough in the evening to give me some quality time with my wife.
We'll see how it goes. It's time for me to clean up my blog updating and go to bed. Sigh. (B)