Exhaustion: who knew there are perks?

I kind of mentioned on Wednesday that sleep is my achilles heel.  Well, actually, my obsession with getting enough of it.  See, I can be kind of a slave to sleep.  Also a bit of a sleep whore/pimp.  Yes, it’s that bad.

Sleep pimp, you ask.  Mmmhmmm.  Don’t make me lecture you.  I will espouse so many benefits it will put you right to zzzzzz- SEE???

So as part of my annoying habit to look for the good in crappy situations, I’m wondering: why do I make more progress with taking risks and other scary stuff when I’m tired and grumpy?  Don’t you just hate it when your achilles heel turns out to be some backwards, roundabout gift?  Argh. 

Some of my tweeple suggested that maybe exhaustion lowers my resistance.  (Yes, I have cool tweeps.  You could, too, if you were tweeting. We already talked about this.  Sheesh.)

When I’m overtired, it’s almost like the utterly charming trifecta of my inner critic / ego / people pleaser sulks or snoozes in the corner while I start ticking scary things off my list.  This is a fairly new development though.

New because now I love what I’m doing, and all of these scary little steps are vital to doing more of it.   Being exhausted in my former career, the one I didn’t love, was not pretty.  It meant surfing the web, instant messaging my friends all day, and eating every bit of the chocolate out of my desk drawers.

For me, the nifty benefit about discovering the benefits of sleep withdrawal is that it allows me to ease up on the feedback screech. Usually instead of just accepting that I’m tired in this moment, I cause myself all kinds of unnecessary anxiety.  I wake up tired and think whine:

Oh no!  I’m so tired, and now I’ll be tired all day, and I really wanted it to be a good day and I have so much to do and I’m so tired and I won’t be productive and everything won’t be perfect.

With this new discovery, I can consciously try to use the sleep-deprived days to tackle a few things I’m terrified to do.  Quick! While the monster is sleeping! Send out that marketingish e-mail!  And then take a shower to rinse away the grime.

Now that I’ve had this little insight, I’m not going to tell you that I enjoy being tired.  Nosiree.  Not even one miniscule iota.  But I am grateful that the discovery of less ego chatter helps me quell the feedback screech.  

When I was five, my dad and sister used to pay my little chatterbox self a dollar to be quiet for an hour.  If only it were that easy with my ego – I need all the help I can get.  (Pshaw.  I never earned that dollar.)