No Books

I have started some books this year, but I’ve not as of today finished a single one.

My normal reading hour, which is my lunch time every day during the week, has been greatly disrupted for the past few months just by the need to often spend my lunch helping my mom our in some way. But that’s no excuse, really.

I’ve been busy with a lot of skateboarding, and frankly, toward the end of the day I simply don’t have the mental energy left to read much of anything. I sure, I’ll surf the web a bit, but no real reading.

At any rate, I started a very interesting and somewhat short book about modern vs. old sleep habits. I found this book after realizing that I slept better in Germany, while camping, than I ever do at home. I actually felt rested, though I was on a cheap military cot, in a sleeping bag, in a tent, and it was cold. This caught my attention. I guess that fact that I feel tired as shit all the time wasn’t enough, but I had nothing with which to compare my normal feeling of sleep deprivation.

As an experiment, when my wife is going for a week in August, I’m going to try my best to turn off all screens of any kind after 9pm at home. No interwebs. No TV. Just maybe some reading (not on a Kindle) and music (not on a computer or iPod). I’m going to then turn off all the lights in the house at 10, and block all unnatural light from bedroom. and go to sleep.

This is going to be hard to pull off, because the asshole neighbors behind us keep a porchlight on for their fucking dog. Other people insist on keeping “security lights” blazing all night, though we live in lowest-crime neighborhood in town. Blah blah blah. My point is — there is a lot of natural light to shut out, and that makes it impossible to also WAKE from natural light.

So this may just not work. But it is a worthy experiment, and at worst I will get more sleep. So no harm in trying.

Well, back to reading. Though I love getting all tired in the evenings from skateboarding, I also love to read. I’m going to a contest in Philly in October, but I must admit I’m looking forward to winter. I’ve come to love the winter. Dark early. Cold days. Lay on the couch and read and read and read. I love that.

So maybe I can crank through some good books in the next five months and save the year. It would be nice if Pancho were still around to lay next to me while I read, but maybe this guy will try to fill his shoes.

2015-07-29 08.46.20

 

2 thoughts on “No Books

  1. zeppomanx

    On a slightly related topic, I once saw the author of “At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past” on BookTV. Really fascinating stuff, when you consider that until the late 18th century light after sunset was the same for the previous 3000 thousand years (or whenever they invented the candle). And it was radically different from anything we know of.

    anyway check out some the reviews on Amazon

    http://www.amazon.com/At-Days-Close-Night-Times/dp/0393329011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403905802&sr=8-1&keywords=At+Day%27s+Close

    Reply

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