You know what? To hell with the stock market. I'm not gonna give you advice on how to buy your cares away after you make a fortune mooning some flash-in-the-pan shitcoin. I'm not gonna tell you what a nest egg is, or what the "T" in "ETF" is. I'm not gonna tell you the best Philippine cities to retire in to maximize your dollar. Those tips are for idiots.
I'm gonna tell you something that's absolutely gonna change your life more than some dumb personal finance or life motivation stuff. I will disclaim that it's something I'm still figuring out. But because I'm in the throes of it right now, you had better take my perspective seriously if you want to start making gains in your own life.
You know sleep? That thing we do for like a third of our lives or whatever the statistic is? Your body absolutely NEEDS that stuff. I'm serious. If you can't sleep, you can't live. You make poor decisions and you die an unfulfilled shell of a person. You ever try and run a car when there's dirt and ice and nutella inside the engine? Yeah, you can't. You gotta clean that stuff out.
Our brains poop, by the way. I like to harp on about this point every so often because not only is it a weird thing to think about, but it puts into perspective just how fucking important sleep is. It's not just recharging batteries and sorting memories into piles. It's literally about clearing toxic garbage out of your brain. You don't get that shit out and you are slowly killing yourself.
Sleep is one of those things that everyone just assumes they're doing well, until one day they fall asleep in an awkward place and realize they've been a zombie for too long. I think my country's caffeine addiction definitely hides this truth from us, to some extent.
But why and how are we doing sleep wrong?
The first "how" is easy. Sleep hygiene, a term I'm not fond of because I have weird aversions to things, is better known as "doomscrolling TikTok in your bed when you should have been asleep hours ago." It's that thing that I think we've been doing more of, where we just check our phone in bed. We check our phones at all times. As someone who is perpetually socially awkward, I love having a phone to pretend-check as a graceful exit from an awkward situation. But even I have my weaknesses, and I'll catch myself pulling out the phone to blankly check the same 2 or 3 places whenever I'm bored. The bedroom is not the place to do this. You don't need to be militant about it, and hell, some people have to be available after hours for shit, but trust me, put your phone away and if you're gonna use it, don't use it while you're in bed.
This one is a bit hypocritical of me to say since I use my computer in bed. See, I told you I was still learning. My therapist suggested I decouple the PC space from the bed space to promote better sleep hygiene, so I'm gonna be doing that soon, for the greater good of myself.
The next "how" is stimuli. Maybe that's just more sleep hygiene. Set up your environment so that you fall asleep and you stay asleep. If you need music, set music, but make sure it doesn't run all night and wake you up. If you like lights, put them on a timer so you don't wreck your circadian rhythm. If you need to sleep naked, I guess sleep naked. I'm not your mother. The stuff that helps you fall asleep may not be good at helping you stay asleep, so plan the two items separately and with as little extra effort required as possible.
Another "how" is breathing. As someone who can't breathe, let me be the first to confidently tell you that breathing is important. If you can't do that while sleeping, then you really aren't sleeping. Try and get a sleep study done so you can figure out where you are with your nocturnal nourishment. Sleep apnea, asthma, etc.
Another "how" that is kinda tangential is trauma. I'm not really a trauma survivor the way other people I know are. But that affects sleep in so many ways that I can't even begin to go into. Trauma can impact our willingness to sleep, or how well we sleep, or other stuff I'm trying to grasp at without coming off as insensitive. This is more in the crosshairs of a therapist, but it's worth tackling the problem if only in a way that gets you better sleep, because getting better sleep will color everything else about your healing process as a survivor.
The final "how" that I can think of is chemicals. Like vaguely, I guess. Eating is important. Some people say don't eat before bed, but they also say don't go to bed on an empty stomach, and some people lean back in their recliners after dinner and go "you know, it's the tryptophan that makes you tired." Where in the hell was I going with this
Melatonin may or may not improve your sleep. THC and marijuana-derived products may help you induce a state that's way more conducive to good sleep. Also, if the idea of self-preservation antagonizes you, antihistamines are also a good sleep augmenter, provided you have the free time.
I'm sure there's other stuff too, like the quality of your mattress and following strict sleep schedules and stuff. Yeah, like I'm currently not doing. Point is, I want to live longer, and maybe you should too, so take a hint from what I'm about to do in 5 minutes and get some sleep. Some GOOD sleep.
I had a tumor cut out last month.
I've only been "under the knife" once other time to get my wisdom teeth taken out. This time was different, the tumor was something called a "Glomus tumor" which just barely sat under the skin or something, meaning it's quick to excise and they only need local anaesthetic. The tumor itself was probably the size of a plastic bead or something. It's likely benign, but it seemed to press against my nerves in just the right spot to hurt like hell.
So I go into the surgeons last week, they shave my fuzzy arm a little bit, and then they inject the anaesthetic. The surgeon comes in with this cute Asian understudy, and I'm already sweating because the A/C on the top floor doesn't work. I'm just hoping this'll be over quickly.
The very first time I ever got my blood drawn, I committed the cardinal sin of watching them do it. The moment I saw that bluish dark red fluid extricate itself from my body through a tube, I felt so physically unwell. That's mine! That's the essence of my very life! Why are you taking that from me!? I think I got a little pale and a little queasy, and I had to sit in my car for a few minutes afterward to regain myself. A few months later, I got blood drawn again. And this time, I didn't look, but it didn't matter. The stage of expectations had already been set. I felt the prick of the needle, and within moments I turned ivory-white in front of the nurse and several of my coworkers. I had to be laid on the floor with my legs up, while my vision got all...noisy...and someone was trying to hand me juice and crackers.
So, I don't do too well with blood loss anymore. And wouldn't you believe, there was a lot of blood loss with the excision, too. I didn't look. I felt the pain of the first incision from the doctor's scalpel, but the anaesthetic took on quickly and everything after that just felt like numb tugging. But I could feel that I was losing something, and that something was probably pretty important to staying conscious. I clasped my shirt uncomfortably, staring at a fixed point in the ceiling like some newly-minted trauma victim. I was breathing heavily through my nose, my face and head were absolutely beaded with sweat, and noise began to cloud my vision. I wanted that operation to be over so bad. I didn't dare look. It felt like another minute on that table and I would have certainly passed out.
Is this dramatic? Absolutely. But in the end, I lost enough blood for my mind to kinda lose itself in some way. My doctor says I have really bad high blood pressure. Maybe that has something to do with it? But yeah, turns out blood is really important for you.
Anyways, I get patched up, I get my bearings, and I head home. I wanted to ask them to see the tumor, but I unfortunately couldn't get the timing right. I can't say I'm nostalgic for it anymore.
So I get home with this recently-closed wound, and am told I can't shower for like 2 days. Luckily I was off work the next 2 days, but because I had just gotten off work prior to the surgery, and because I work in a rather dirty environment, that meant 2 days of sleeping in my own filth and just letting it hang out all over my sheets and headphones and whatnot. I couldn't really "wrap" the wound area or anything. But yeah, my bed has trace amounts of dried blood and nicotene and cigarette ash and stuff. God, I can't wait for this thing to fully heal so I can fully disinfect my place.
The funny thing about tumors is that people always think they're Hollywood tumors: those big undulating growths that show up just to kill someone a few minutes later in some heart-tugging hospital scene. So of course, when I come back to work gauzed up like I just fought off an English mugger, I get so many wide-eyed platitudes, like this tumor was threatening to yank me out of this mortal plane or something. I don't like attention, but I do take a perverse pleasure in bait-and-switching people with something that seems way more dramatic than it actually is. Leading with noncontextualized shock value might not even be a useful or even healthy tactic when telling stories, but I love catching people off-guard like that. The key is to have a quick and effective line on hand to de-escalate the conversation in case they start to freak out.
So yeah, lots of the same interaction for the first few days. What's that bandage? OMG You had a tumor? Did they put you fully under? Can you use your arm? etc etc etc for several days.
Honestly, if the repetitive social interactions are any indicator, I'm glad the tumor was benign. I can't imagine having to constantly give news to people of varying importance that I've got 6 months left to live or something. After a certain point, I should just stop explaining and instead hand them a business card with all the FAQ's about my impending death. I bet Vistaprint would even give me a discount.